Free The Frogs

Short rant, just to keep things alive

2010-12-15T11:29:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven't posted. I offer no excuses.

Today, a brief rant about Christmas. I heard a fellow say on the radio about gift-giving: "Or you can just ask for what you want. That's what adults do."

Arghhhhhhh!

No, that's what toddlers do. "Here's what I want, Santa!" As my grandaddy used to say when I was a child, "You've got your 'wanter' stuck out." Again, the spirit of giving turns into the spirit of getting. I'm such a curmudgeon, I have a hard time telling anyone that I want something for Christmas. Ask me any other time, and it's just a kindly question. But around now, it makes me feel like a co-conspirator in the Great Gift-Getting Gala. Those who ask me such questions are entirely innocent. So this is not a criticism of them at all. But honestly, it makes me uncomfortable. It unconsciously feeds this spirit of getting that leaves such a bitter taste in my mouth.

Now, I will admit that I do this holiday dance a bit as well. Still uncomfortable; makes me feel like I don't know a loved one well enough to think of anything she might enjoy. Hurts my feelings. And maybe I'm splitting hairs in my view. But I don't mind my friend asking another friend what might bless me. That leaves me out of the loop and leaves my "want list" on the shelf. I don't want to think about what I want-- I have that disorder without feeding it further.

I've told my family this story: one of the best Christmas gifts I ever got was small and fairly cheap and utilitarian. It was a pair of inexpensive mechanical pencils. Many years ago, my sister-in-law apparently noticed that I passed a lot of my time during in-law visits sketching architectural plans. That observation made for a nice gift. Since then, others have done similar things for me, I know -- my framed map of Tolkien's Middle Earth is really cool-- but that first one just stuck with me.

I like giving. I like getting. But I like THINKING about giving a lot more than about the other side of the coin.

Be True To Your Clergyman

2010-09-30T10:24:00.000-07:00

A Scottish friend sent this message: "I was listening to a Mark Driscoll sermon today. There are things I like about him, and things I don't care for so much. But he said this:

Quote:
Comparing your pastor of his little flock to the great preachers of the world...is like comparing your wife to another woman....it's an act of betrayal.

My take on it?

The prophet Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys said,
Quote:
Be true to your school
Just like you would to your girl
Be true to your school
Let your colors fly
Be true to your school!

Now, replace "school" with "pastor" and you have the basis for Driscoll's statement.

This all goes back to this exclusive ownership thing that local clubs (and their professional staff) need in order to survive. (A different antecedent for the term "MY sheep"...) I do know this, that fellow who is suffering from comparison to Charles Spurgeon or Robert Schuller or Charles Stanley or whoever needs to look hard at his relationships with the "little flock". In my experience, a true pastoral relationship does not suffer from the sheep hearing a good sermon from somebody else. In fact, that shepherd is usually the first sounding board for what the sheep hears elsewhere. But if that club manager is mainly connecting to people by his Sunday sermons and his management of club programs, he deserves to suffer by comparison. And he should probably develop some more secular job skills, because he may need 'em.

Driscoll is trying to help protect the small club manager's salary. Sort of a fraternal favor, and maybe to a lesser extent, defending his own turf. This is from the same playbook as the sermons which claim that God commands you to tithe to your local religion club. Again, we find a system of clubs trying desperately to hold onto the exclusive rights to a believer's resources so that the club may continue.

It's almost like finding a counselor who stirs up fear and anxiety in his client so that he can maintain his practice of helping the client deal with fear and anxiety. The client stays in the therapeutic process for life and the counselor makes a decent living off of him. When that client dies, get another one and repeat the process. A client who actually gets well enough that he no longer needs the therapist, well that's to be avoided at all cost.

The New Patriarchs

2010-09-24T18:48:00.000-07:00

I continue to be amazed at the durability of simple pride among believers. Many have left Christian denominations and clubs after tiring of being ruled over by men and traditions rather than God. And some of those same folks are finding themselves in the latest version of just what they left, only with themselves as the ruling class.

The fashion now is to ask a believer, "Who is your father?" in an effort to find out if he has submitted himself to another man's rule, and if not, to determine his availability to be ruled. While the construct of spiritual fathers is both biblical and IMO a necessary part of our spiritual development, this current twist seems more intent on bringing people under submission to human authority and to cement those relationships-- often with regular cash payments to "dad" as part of the equation. I'm not so sure this is healthy spiritual parenting. A good father holds most precious the day his child is mature and free. Some of the new patriarchs I am seeing are gathering to themselves "children" long past the age to be asking their daddy for permissions and instruction. Jesus warned us not to call anyone "Father", as we have but One. This admonition is ringing in my ears again, for the first time in a long time.

Years ago, I was separated from my children by distance and circumstance, and I was worried sick about my inability to be an active father to them over the miles. I was complaining rather bitterly about this state of things to a dear brother, who looked me in the eye with unaccustomed sternness and said from the Lord, "How dare you think that I am not their father?" In that single sentence, I found myself re-oriented by the Holy Spirit into my right place with my children. God is their father just as he is mine. While I am called to serve them as a father, both physically and spiritually, that role is merely a small reflection of the glorious reality of their True Father. The measure of my success as a father will not be how often my children call me for advice-- or how much they take it. It will not be even in their expressions of love and respect for me. It will be, rather, in how well my children are able to connect with their heavenly Father, carrying their connection with me as a model and an encouragement and a help in walking as eternal sons.

Good fathers raise and release, rather than collect and keep. They save up for their children rather than seeking to have their children support them. They decrease as He increases. They rejoice more in their child's divine sonship than in their own fatherhood. I am blessed in hearing my own natural father, who introduced me to Jesus, refer to me often as "son", but just as often as "brother".

For those of you spiritual fathers who are working hard to lay your lives down for your spiritual children, may God bless you. And may you see those children blossom as true sons of the Most High. For those who are embracing fellowship in your households and neighborhoods, may your table be full! But for those who would in the name of fatherhood gather people to themselves so that they may rule over them, may God eventually make this plain as well.

Radical-in-Chief

2010-09-11T08:41:00.001-07:00

A friend posting on a discussion board referred to Jesus as our "Radical-in-Chief".

I like this a lot. Sometimes, we lose sight of just how radical Jesus' teachings are; instead of the confusion and outrage experienced by Jesus' listeners, we seem to have filed the sharp edge off the sword and allow ourselves to nod agreeably with Jesus' words. Perhaps we should look at just how radical our Master is, and how radically different he calls us to be--

Love your enemies. Well, I don't have anybody really trying to hurt me right now, and if I do, I just get away from them. What do you mean, I should mow the lawn of my next door neighbor, whose kid just beat up my kid?

If someone asks something of you, give it to him without expecting repayment. Well, everybody knows better than to ask to borrow on those terms, so I don't have a problem there. Except for my ungrateful brother-in-law who continues to try to sponge off me and won't get a real job, and about whom I complain regularly to my friends. Technically, I don't "expect repayment", as he never does pay me back, so I think I'm good here...

If a man takes your coat, give him your shirt, too. If a man takes my coat, I let law enforcement handle it. At the very least, I lock up everything else so he doesn't get to me again. I call that "being a good steward".

If a man compels you to travel one mile, go two. As long as the government gives me a tax loophole, I'm taking it. As long as the cops won't ticket me for doing 75 in a 70, I'm setting the cruise on 75.

Lay not up for yourselves treasure on earth. You're kidding, right? My 410k is not really "treasure", not after that last market crash, anyway. What about my retirement? My kids' college? Who's gonna take care of me if I don't do it myself? Jesus had to be talking to rich people, not me.

Ever wonder why Jesus had enemies? If you hammered away on these things in the church today, I think you would find someone ordering wood and nails for you, too.

There's Fish, and There's Bait

2010-08-29T08:57:00.000-07:00

Announce to the family that tonight's dish is fish, and the response is, "Okay."

But announce instead that you are serving minnows, and the response will be even less enthusiastic. Why? Because even your grade-school child knows the difference between food and bait.

A brother on a discussion board was asking the most common question known to organized Christianity: "How do we get more people to come to church?" And it got me to thinking, even as I was quick to recommend some form of service to the community. Question: If we choose to do good for our neighbors, is our intent important? If we offer to feed the neighborhood, does it matter whether we are using this as an inducement to church attendance or as simple altruism?

In a word, yes. It's the difference between serving fish and serving bait.

Jesus castigated the Pharisees for doing good works "to be seen of men". And we readily join Him in that criticism. But really, how different was the Pharisee's motivation from that of the average religion club? Is it really all that different when we hold children's events at our club in hopes of attracting that prize of demographics-- "young families with children"? Here, we are certainly not doing our good works in secret, but are hoping that the recipients of our efforts will "reward us openly" with attendance and cash in the offering plate. But since we are concurrently blessing someone else, we excuse our self-interest.

I wonder if this is the kind of activity contemplated when Jesus told of people telling God, "Did we not in your name do many wonderful works?" only to hear Him reply, "I don't know you." Perhaps the people were telling the truth. But God sees through to the intents of the heart.

In Latin, the question is "Cui bono?" That is, "Who benefits?" When we ask how to get something WE want, and the answer is to serve others, this is charity in service to self. We are the intended beneficiaries, the people we serve merely participants who will hopefully help us get what we want. But it is quite easy to claim that we are truly being altruistic. Sometimes we even believe it. But here's a simple test:

The next time your group plans a service to others, ask honestly if you can do it without anyone giving credit to your group. Real service can almost always be done this way. If you find yourselves having difficulty imagining a work of service wherein you get no credit, that should be a serious warning sign about the intentions of your charitable endeavors.

Doing our good works in secret is hard because we are so accustomed to putting our faces - or the name of our club - on the front of everything. We don't even think of it as self-serving. It's so common as to be invisible. Individuals seem to be able to serve selflessly, but organizations find it almost impossible. Here's an out-of-the-box question to kick around in your group, as you look at working in your community: "How can we bless somebody and not get caught at it?" If you can do that, know that your Father will reward you openly.

A good question to ask about a work of service: Would you do this in a dark room, where no one could see, and where no one would ever know? And before you quickly say, "Yes!" to the question, examine how often your group has done such things in the past. Often, such an honest self-appraisal leads to a lot of prayer. And change.

The Old Paths, circa 1680

2010-08-28T06:59:00.000-07:00

I grew up in a religious tradition in which, when I had the opportunity to do the right thing, I would say, “I will obey God, as I should.” When I did the wrong thing, I would say, “Well, nobody’s perfect, and I am doing my best. I hope God will forgive me.”

Contrast this with this description of a 17th century Carmelite monk:
When an occasion of practicing some virtue offered, he addressed himself to God, saying, “Lord, I cannot do this, unless Thou enablest me,” and that then he received strength more than sufficient. That when he had failed in his duty, he only confessed his fault, saying to God, I shall never do otherwise if you leave me to myself; ‘tis You must hinder my falling, and mend what is amiss.” That after this, he gave himself no further uneasiness about it.

These days, I am slowly coming closer to the latter place than the former. There's more air here. And more of the presence of God.

Oh, the quotation is from Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, a Carmelite lay brother who died in 1691.

Sunday Sermons are Obsolete

2010-08-27T19:39:00.000-07:00

A sister in Scotland suggests, correctly I believe, that the traditional Sunday sermon is obsolete.

The whole idea of a sermon-oriented meeting needs to be re-thought. The assumptions?

When you get people together, you need to teach them. Says who? The people who make a living doing those lectures, that's who. Getting together to learn is a fine thing, but assuming that this needs to dominate every gathering is simply not well thought out. First, you can more easily absorb a podcast than a live lecture. Pause, rewind, review, all these are important learning aids that live speech can't offer. You can also catch the message even if you're not ready to tramp down to the sanctuary, or if you can't. And you have access to lots more teachers and topics than you can get from that one guy who does your pulpit thing every week.

Second, technology renders the need to gather people for simple communication obsolete. It actually became such when reliable mail service became available, but the Internet has established this beyond doubt.

Third, gathering people together, only to forbid them to interact for over half their time together is a terrible waste. It's like buying a boat, towing it to the lake on Saturday morning, loading the family up in the boat, and keeping the boat on the trailer for half the day. It does not make sense. If I'm going to be with my family, I want to be able to connect with them!

Get together to worship, to fellowship, to testify, to pray for each other... all these are sound reasons for us to be getting together. So why do we spend most of our time together looking at the back of our brother's head, being fed information we could have easily have gotten at home?

Traditions are like crabgrass... ubiquitous and hard to kill. Best treatment I know is to shine really bright lights on them and talk honestly about them.

Contrarian advice for club leaders

2010-08-04T11:16:00.000-07:00

I recognize that many well-intentioned religion club leaders will read my criticisms of the club system and say, "Well, but our group is not like that." To them, I say, you may be right. Here is some anti-traditional advice that you might consider. Every suggestion is designed to unwind some bad habit or negative result commonly found in the average religion club. If you find you can recognize the value here and seriously consider these things, perhaps you are not "like everyone else". But the rubber meets the road at actually doing some of these things.

Leaders! Go ye therefore and...

Attend various other local churches’ activities and services, including Sunday morning services. Do this at least twice a month. This especially applies to those who are called to be shepherds of God’s people. The elders lead by example, either modeling unity or division. Leadership is never neutral.

Find and invite gifted people from other local groups to lead or teach in your activities and services at least twice a month. If you do not know very many such people, it is a sign that you have become isolated from the rest of the Body.

When you hear that another church is doing a ministry in the community similar to what God has called you into, go to them and ask to be a part of that work. Do not go back and recreate that ministry in your own building.

Establish personal, accountable relationships between individual shepherds and individual sheep. People are never shepherded by organizations, but by individuals to whom God has joined them.

Release less-mature people to minister, in tandem with more-proven believers. Place weight on more mature Christians to pray for and mentor them as they minister.

Elders: Develop relationships with other church leaders. Call them and ask if your group can come to their services. Dismiss your own Sunday morning services at least four times a year and meet with other groups en masse. Do this strictly for the purpose of fellowship. Bring them a large offering.

Open your homes at least once a week and share a meal with someone. If you don’t have time for this, cancel a church activity and free up the time. Elders must be “given to hospitality”, so on them this requirement is even greater.

In lieu of organizing a “visitor visitation” program, invite strangers to your home for lunch after church every Sunday.

Mark out special parking places for the church leaders… farthest from the building.

Take the church building budget. Pay a contractor to repair widows’ houses and fix the church building yourself with what’s left.

Give to and serve in community projects. Insist that your church’s name not appear on the credits.

Schedule church activities at different times than everyone else does. If everyone else has Wednesday night services, meet on Thursday. In this way you will add to, and not compete with, what God is doing elsewhere, and you will create opportunity for fellowship.

Team children with adults to minister to the needs of others, even adults. Children move into intercession easily when encouraged to do so.

Have parents minister to children rather than trying to “take this burden off them”. (In that tradition lie the seeds of the destruction of spiritual inheritance.)

If you are doing any of the following, STOP. If you are not doing it, do not start:

Taking attendance or counting heads. A true shepherd cannot depend on Sunday morning meetings to look after the sheep. And one who counts sheep is not a shepherd, but a herdsman.

Asking people to “place membership” with your group. If they are born again, they are members of the body of Christ. If “membership” requires more than Jesus required, it is not Jesus’ church they are joining.

Making attendance at your services a requirement for any other part of the spiritual relationship. Accountable relationships and ministry joints are the important things.

Making church programs out of God’s callings. If a person is called to make bread for the needy, buy him flour instead of starting a First Church Bakery Ministry. If a person is called to minister to the sick, pray, support and encourage him. Do not make him the Chairman of the Hospital Visitation Committee.

Making ministries that require you to find people to fill slots. This leads immature people to follow the slots rather than the Lord.

What think ye?

There Are More Of Us Than You Think

2010-07-24T08:04:00.000-07:00

Today, there is an AP article in the papers on the subject of house churches. Some interesting points I noticed in the article:

According to a religious data-crunching company called the Barna Group, somewhere between 6 and 12 million Americans attend house churches. The Pew Forum finds seven percent of Americans say they attend services in someone's home, and that 9 percent of American Protestants attend ONLY home services.

That means we are not so odd after all. One out of every eleven American Protestants does not do "big church" at all, but only "house church". So, if there are an estimated 60,000 Protestants in my metro area, over 5,000 of us may well fit that profile that my church-going friends find so very odd. That is, we don't have a "home church" whose brick-and-mortar edifice can be attended at the posted hours. My religious peers seem to think that I am one odd duck, as I have regular fellowship in homes, and I don't hold membership in any local religion club.

Another thing I found interesting in the AP article (by Linda Stewart Ball) was how the take that she got from institutional sources was so different from what she heard from people who are immersed in house churches. A researcher connected with the Southern Baptist Convention opined that we are motivated by our desire "for a simpler expression of church". (As though "church" is a given, and it is only the modern complexity that we don't like.) Ask Tony Dale, a brother from Austin whom some of you know, who has been working in house churches for years, and he says, "I'd say the vast majority of house churches we know are Christians honestly trying to live 24-7 for Jesus." It's not about how you organize the church services, my institutional brothers! It's about an organic connection with other people who are living the life we are living for Jesus.

This subtle, but important difference in viewpoint shows up in how the religion clubs try to incorporate small groups into their structure. They see this phenomenon, and so they try to "get some of that". So, they assign people to "home groups", often developing those groups demographically. (One group I connect with is an "older believers" group out of a large local religion club.) Then they provide vetting of leadership, and organization and lesson plans and reporting requirements and attendance checks and all the stuff that many of us find so worthless in the club at large. The club wants the benefit of the small group dynamic without releasing any of their institutional control of its members.

It's too much like a "spontaneous demonstration" in Iran. The feelings may be real, but the overall intent is to accomplish a goal of the organizers. But at least they can organize the buses and have the signs printed up for our convenience.

And frankly, I don't have any hope that will change. Every religion club's main raison d'etre is to continue to exist as a viable organization. So, they will adapt every positive wave in the church to help achieve that goal. This is not to say that the clubs do not have a desire to follow Jesus. They do. But they are not open to following Him in any path that leads to their own dissolution or significant loss of their religious market share.

But I am encouraged by the recent poll numbers. They give the lie to this idea that people stop going to church because they become lukewarm or worse. No, more and more of us are stepping completely out of club membership to embrace spiritual fellowship. And in my opinion, it's time that my brothers in places of leadership in the local church begin to learn from us a bit, rather that looking down on us while simultaneously trying to co-opt our practices for their own ends.

A Selfish Gratitude, Redux

2010-07-14T18:31:00.000-07:00

This is a re-run from last year, but I just re-read it. I still like it...

We have all taken the "We should be more grateful" guilt trip. Unfortunately, too many of my well-intentioned brothers make this a sermon staple. I think it started when we wouldn't eat the beets Mom cooked when we were six years old. Remember when she reminded us about the starving children in (insert deprived nation/continent here) who went to bed hungry? It didn't make us grateful for beets-- just made us wonder why we couldn't ship them to the hungry kids Mom knew and make a win/win out of the deal.

So we grew up having our blessings pointed out to us as an illustration of our own malformed character. Didn't help much. For the record, I have yet to meet the person who developed a lifestyle of thankfulness because he felt so badly about his previous ingratitude.

What if we came to realize that thankfulness is actually good for us? (Like most things God wants us to have.) Not good for us in the "You better eat your asparagus" sense, but in the "Now, that's what I'm talkin' about!" sense. Consider, if you will, that thankfulness is like a developed sense, like smell, for example. If you are insensitive to aromas, nothing stinks. But nothing smells good, either. You never get to know the difference between sweaty socks and homemade sugar cookies. Ingratitude is like that. Gratitude, on the other hand, is like the capacity to wake up in the morning and smell rain, or brewing coffee, or the pine tree outside the window. It is to experience with greater depth and clarity what is good around us.

And gratitude can be cultivated.

It's simple, really. We are often prompted by the Holy Spirit to be thankful. Take each opportunity to say, "Thanks!" Even if you forgot to do so when it happened. Don't feel guilty about the timing, just express your gratitude when you remember. The more this happens, well, the more it happens. The more you sniff, the more you smell. The more you offer your thanks-- to God or to anyone else-- the more aware you are of the gifts given to you. The more aware you are of your blessings, the more you enjoy them. The more you enjoy them, the better your overall appraisal of life in your world.

You know those people who seem to always be able to see the good in the world around them? Those pollyannish, unrealistic people whose apparent happiness is so annoying? The ones you secretly envy? They are most often those favored few who have learned to express their thanksgiving as part of their living and breathing, and in so doing touch the beauty of life with great depth and vitality.

Gratitude. Do it for you.

The Path to Faith

2010-07-14T18:01:00.000-07:00

Warning, long post! But may be worth the read....

The Path to Faith
“So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Romans 10:17 (NKJV)

I have been wrong a long time on this one. Fortunately for my battered intellectual ego, I am not alone. In reading the above passage over the years (and hearing sermons on it, and preaching sermons on it), I always understood it to mean something like this: “Read your Bible, and believe what it says…especially if someone preaches it to you.” What I heard all these years was “Faith comes by hearing the Bible preached”.

Now reading my Bible is an important thing, as is receiving godly teaching, and believing what is taught. But Paul is not saying any of these things in this particular verse. He is rather, shining a light on one of the “mysteries of God”…and that is the mystery of just exactly how we come by (or acquire) faith.

We are encouraged time and time again in scripture to believe… to have faith… not to doubt… not to fall into the sin of unbelief. So we are being instructed to “do” something. Yet Paul tells the Ephesians that we are saved by grace through faith, “and this not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” So faith is something we receive from the Father. So do we wait on it, or go after it? Do we make a mental decision to “believe” or does God make that decision? Is believing about using our mental skills, or about refusing to do so? Resting on the answer to this mystery is our ability daily to walk by faith as Christians.

In studying Romans 10:17, I was faced with the paradox that the leading of the Spirit of God is not necessarily contrary to other sources of information. I am an escapee from a long tradition of interpreting the Word by mental gymnastics, and I tend to flee any kind of natural reason in seeking the wisdom of God. So in this case, God (as seems to be His wont) led me against my personal inclinations to the ancient Greek text. The lesson: God is often willing to let my mind go along for the revelation ride; He just won’t let it drive.

Romans 10:17 presents a rich picture that opens up first linguistically. Do you remember first-year algebra? There we learned to restate things logically so that we could better handle the information presented. Let’s apply this concept to the verse in question. Paul says faith comes by (is the product of) hearing. Hearing comes by (is the product of) the word of God (Greek: “word of Christ”). Allow me to simply restate what Paul has said in a different way.

“The word of Christ produces hearing, and hearing in turn produces faith.” --Romans 10:17

This restatement allows us to see clearly (and perhaps for the first time) the path to faith. But seeing the road and navigating it are different things. For starters, exactly what “word” are we talking about?

The Word of Christ

The Greek word here is rhema, the spoken word (or current word) that is from Christ. How do we get this kind of word from Christ? Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would “take what is mine and make it known to you”. So Paul is speaking of the revelation by the Holy Spirit of what Jesus is saying to us at a particular moment. This may be directly from scripture or it may not be. Most assuredly, anything the Holy Spirit speaks will be in agreement with what He has already spoken in scripture.

The “Word” actually produces hearing. Creative power in the words of God has been evident since He said, “Let there be light” and there was light. So the driving force behind the faith process is not our will or actions, but the creative power of the words of God.

I Hear You

So the word of Christ produces “hearing”. That God chooses to give us hearing implies that we do not already hear. So Paul is obviously not referring to natural hearing with our natural ears. The Greek word translated “hearing” in Romans 10:17 can best be translated “to hear so as to understand”. We experience this phenomenon every day. For example, it is one thing for my words to come in contact with the ears of my son. It is yet another for him to understand. Yesterday, when I corrected him, I made the statement, “Now, do what you know is right.” This was not a general philosophical statement, and he knew it. His “hearing” of my words went something like this: “I’m not supposed to hit my sister. And if I go out and do things I am not supposed to do, Dad is going to spank me again.”

He is a very perceptive little boy.

We even use this terminology as adults. When we say, “I hear you”, it most often means we understand and identify with what someone else is saying to us. So in this passage of scripture, “hearing” refers to spiritual perception. That is, the capacity to see things according to God’s reality instead of the reality that comes from our five senses. Abraham had spiritual perception when he went to the mountain to sacrifice Isaac. He told his servants, “We will go up and worship, and we will come back down.” This flew in the face of his full intention to kill Isaac. In natural reality, it made no sense. But in God’s reality, the promise of God was the controlling factor, so Abraham spoke and acted according to his spiritual perception.

So the word of Christ creates spiritual perception. Often we struggle to grasp what God is saying to us, when the seeds of spiritual perception are in the very words we have heard.

I’m reminded of Peter’s little stroll across the Sea of Galilee. This is often used as a model of the potential power of faith. But it did not begin that way. It began with fear (“It’s a ghost!”) and proceeded to a test by Peter (“Lord, if it’s you, tell me to come to you on the water.”). The real action started with a single word from the mouth of Jesus, “Come!”

That word set something off in Simon Peter. Spiritual perception took over from natural perception. The conflict of “God says this, but I see something different” was settled in an instant. And Peter went over the side of the boat.

Just what did Peter expect to happen when he went over the side? I believe he expected what he had experienced hundreds of times before at the end of a workday. At days’ end, fishermen drove their boats onto the beach. How many times had Peter jumped out of his boat and onto the sand to pull his boat ashore? When Peter hopped over the rail to walk to Jesus, this is the reality that filled him. Just a walk on the beach… or in this case, on the water.

But Peter Sank…

The theological debate goes on—is Peter’s example more an encouragement to get out of the boat, or a warning not to look at the waves, a warning against unbelief? I think both his walk and his sinking reveal a critical part of the mystery of coming to faith.

Peter stepped onto the surface of the Sea of Galilee because he walked in the same spiritual perception that Jesus walked in. And that spiritual perception sprang from a single God-word, “Come!” Peter saw a reality that said, “If I couldn’t come, He wouldn’t call me.” Faith followed as the flowers follow the rain, and sent Peter over the side. Faith is the “evidence of things not seen”, and Peter walked by faith.

But God speaks to us on a constant basis today. And if His Word produces this spiritual perception we need, why do we so often not get it… as evidenced by our unbelief? Most of us are not walking on the water. So what’s the problem?

It’s the wind. Matthew reports that when Peter “saw the wind”, he was afraid and began to sink. The wind did not blow Peter into the lake. Rather, his spiritual perception was challenged by his natural understanding. Peter let his years of experience and knowledge begin to override the perception God had granted. And he began to sink. You see, in the midst of spiritual reality, there is natural reality. It does not go away. It is part of our mental makeup. And it is the greatest barrier to a life of faith.

Often, I’ve heard this lesson taught as though faith was some sort of mental exercise. “Don’t get your eyes off Jesus!” we say, as though walking by faith was dependent on our powers of concentration. It is much like trying to go as long as possible without blinking. You know you are going to blink—that you need to blink—but there is some sort of odd value in stalling that moment as long as possible. We try to use our natural willpower to somehow overcome the flesh. But it doesn’t work. It never has. We continue to lose money betting on the instant replay, trying again and again to overcome natural understanding by the powers of the natural mind.

You’re Not Losing Your Mind, Your Mind Is Losing You

The barrier to spiritual perception is natural wisdom. Paul quotes Isaiah in this regard, saying, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” Our natural wisdom creates a set of screens and filters through which we evaluate everything we experience. The “wiser” we become, the more elaborate our screens. We belittle those whose filter sets are not as well developed as our own. We call them naïve, gullible, uncritical, irrational, foolish. We warn them that they are likely to be deceived. They are like, well, like little children. And we know what Jesus said about that.

“Unless you change, and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

The path to faith requires time spent in the land of the childlike. Children are by their nature, uncritical. Junior sees an animal on television, and he asks Dad what it is. “It’s a yak,” Dad replies. And from now on, to Junior that hairy ox-like thing with the big horns is a yak. Junior does not fear deception, for he trusts his father. He does not ask for Dad’s references, or back-check his sources, or compare notes with what the other kids’ fathers told them. And the yak (name and picture) is filed for permanent reference in the child’s mental Treasury of Definitions.

When we are childlike, the path of the word of God into our being is short and direct, the results spectacular. It is only when that word encounters our array of natural screens that it gets filtered out and is not allowed to produce God’s designed results. God speaks to us, and our filtering process kicks in automatically. “Does this make sense? Does it match my current understanding? Have I ever heard this before? From whom? Do I trust them? If not, how can I trust this? What will happen to me if I accept this? What will my peers say? Does it mean I was wrong? Can I afford to be wrong? Am I deceived? How can I tell?”

Is it any wonder we do not believe?

A friend of mine was struggling mightily with issues in her life where what she heard from God was overwhelming everything she knew to be common sense. “I feel like I’m losing my mind,” she said. The Spirit’s response was immediate. “Rather, your mind is losing you.” It was not that she was losing control of her faculties, but that the Holy Spirit was vying with her natural mind for mastery of her life. The conflict is often titanic. The victory is in ceasing to struggle and surrendering to the word of God. The screens are ours to relinquish. In this, coming to faith is not a “doing” in any sense, but ceasing to do what we have always done. Ceasing to protect ourselves and our position among men. Ceasing our dependence on our own understanding. Ceasing to remain wise.

The Shortest Step

Once one gives up his death-grip on natural reality and offers himself unshielded and undefended to the words of God, those words produce the ability to see the eternal realm. From there, the obvious response is faith—acting on the spiritual reality that the Spirit reveals. Once Peter realized water could be walked on, what was to stop him from stepping out? Once you know the mulberry tree can be plucked up and thrown into the sea, a mustard seed’s worth of faith is sufficient for the task.

Suddenly, faith is not so far away. It is, after all, the gift of God.

Postscript

The psalmist speaks prophetically to our current state in Psalm 81. Verse 10 says: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of Egypt. Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.” Like a baby bird, we trust not the food but the One who feeds us. We do not pick through what we are offered, looking for bones or gristle. We do not sample to see if the flavor suits our palate. We make ourselves vulnerable, we open our mouths as wide as we can. And we receive. The alternative is in verse 11-12: “But my people would not listen to me; Israel would not submit to me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices.”

There is no ground upon which a compromise can be made. We cannot settle with God to maintain a duke’s mixture of our wisdom and His revelation. One drives out the other. That which does not produce faith limits it. And the righteous shall live by faith.

Devoted Servant, Seeks Promotion

2010-06-14T10:49:00.001-07:00

Considering the current "models" of the church I hear about..

The "household" or "House of God". An organic concept, if you think of Bob, who gets saved and tells his wife and kids about Jesus,then tells his friends and his in-laws, and his neighbor. They function together based on those relationships and Bob, as the most experienced believer, takes a leadership role. This is what the group looks like initially. But what does Bob's role eventually look like? Is he a local patriarch, to whom his spiritual descendants continue to defer as long as he lives? Or is he more like the nuclear family dad, whose role is to prepare and release those he "fathers"? Or like the family doctor, who cares about the family but does not govern it, who gives counsel based on his desire for the family's well-being, without much role in making them act on his advice?

I see so very few real servant-leaders, perhaps because my definition is more connected to real servants than to defining our leadership as "servanthood", while holding power and authority over people that a true servant would never hold to. Our view of a leader's servanthood falls more along the lines of Shakespeare's "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown". Oh, what nonsense. Uneasy the mother who cares for her family without respite and without guarantee that they will prosper. Uneasy the man who must work from sun to sun to provide food and shelter and little else, who may not have that job tomorrow. The head who wears the crown, at least in our kingdoms, fares pretty darn well.

It seems to me almost like servanthood is considered an interim step to authority. But that is not what Jesus told his disciples. He spoke of "greatness" in the kingdom, not of who gets to make decisions for other people in our religion clubs. The servant who becomes "chief among you" must remain that very same servant, or lose his position.

Real World as a Second Language

2010-06-12T07:27:00.000-07:00

"Christians have tended to despise the concept of philosophy. This has been one of the weaknesses of evangelical, orthodox Christianity -- we have been proud in despising philosophy, and we have been exceedingly proud in despising the intellect. Our theological seminaries hardly ever relate their theology to philosophy, and specifically to the current philosophy. Thus, students go out from the theological seminaries not knowing how to relate Christianity to the surrounding world-view. It is not that they do not know the answers. My observation is that most students graduating from our theological seminaries do not know the questions."
(Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)

The One True "Sign" for the American Church

2010-06-08T10:20:00.000-07:00

I was talking with a dear friend the other day about a multi-million dollar church project and he repeated a sentiment I have heard countless times. "If they can raise that kind of money, that probably means God wants them to do it."

Signs and wonders. For the ancient Israelites, it was a pillar of fire and daily manna. For turn-of-the-millennium believers, it was healing the sick and raising the dead. For modern American believers, it's large amounts of money. THAT is the sure sign of the approval of God, the one "sign" agreed upon by almost all doctrinal streams. This manifests itself in small and in large. How many poor laypeople are selected for church boards? Or denominational committees? How much influence do poor believers have in the church in your community?

We directly associate money with God's favor. What's the old country saying? "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" The church's version seems to be, "If God likes you so much, show me the money." The occasional Mother Teresa is the exception to the rule, especially among Protestants. While public acclaim runs a close second-- how many followers you have is the #2 indication of God's approval-- large stacks of cold, hard cash is still Numero Uno in the American church.

Hmm. I wonder. Is Warren Buffet among the prophets?

Looking at the new models... and the old ones

2010-06-06T16:37:00.000-07:00

I keep coming back to this western idea of finding biblical "models" to try on so as to get church "right". We still seem to think that the church had it right two thousand years ago and we need to back and rediscover our lost virgin state. But we are not latter-day believers. We are first-generation Christians! While I am happy to take wisdom and insight and counsel from my predecessors in Christ, trying to figure out how to accurately follow them is no longer my idea of trying to follow Jesus. I have spent a long time getting free of one-off relationship with God, and simply can't find it in myself to trade back down.

As to trying to find the correct "model" to follow, I am reminded of the man who bragged to his friends that his wife was telling everyone that he was a "model husband". Then a friend suggested that he consult a dictionary. He found the following definition:
MODEL(n) A small replica of the real thing.

To The Top of the World

2010-05-28T15:16:00.000-07:00

An ancient emperor of a great kingdom was told of the existence of an enormous mountain at the far western reaches of his kingdom. The mountain, according to legend, was the highest point on earth, and its peak had never been reached. The emperor immediately called for three of his most valiant warriors to leave immediately for the western frontier to claim this mountain in his name. He handed his men a great blue imperial flag to be planted upon the mountain’s snow-capped summit.

The warriors gathered some climbing tools and a large coil of rope, and set out on the long road to the mysterious western mountain, to claim it for their emperor. As they walked along, word spread among the people of their quest. The emperor was wise and beloved among all his subjects, and excitement swelled among them to see the imperial standard carried along on such a noble mission.

All along the way, many citizens gave gifts to the three warriors in the emperor’s honor, and to help along the journey. Early on, they were provided horses to ride, and servants to attend them. Then, they were given tents to sleep under on the journey, along with fine clothing and masterfully crafted armor. Articles of gold and silver, beautiful carvings and tapestries were all given freely to honor the emperor, his warriors, and their quest. Soon, the travelers had acquired oxcarts and oxen to carry their many gifts along the road. What had begun as three men walking became a majestic procession that thrilled every village and hamlet that it passed through. They traveled for many miles, as their fame spread and their treasure growing at every stop along their way.

As they neared the western frontier, the high mountain appeared blue in the distance. The smooth road ran out and low hills appeared. The procession made slower progress as the travelers picked a path through the steadily rising hills. The servants began to complain and the oxen began to struggle as the climb grew steeper. Soon the group was struggling to get the oxcarts up the hills, a task only slightly less arduous than the slippery, rocky descents. At the night’s camp in a small valley, the warriors decided to send the servants back with the oxcarts and all the treasures. “All this was given in the emperor’s name,” objected one of the servants. “And you would leave it behind?”

“We cannot go forward with all this,” replied the warriors. The last rays of sunset glinted off the peak of the great mountain in the west, a silent reminder of the daunting task at hand. “We will take the tents, our climbing gear, and our armor, and go on from here on horseback. Take everything else back.”

The travelers went their separate ways, and the western path grew steeper and more treacherous. As they reached the base of the great mountain, they spent more and more time picking out paths that the horses could negotiate. Hours were spent backtracking, as trails they discovered deteriorated into tracks only accessible to men or mountain goats. Huddled around their meager campfire the next morning, the talk centered on going forward. The horses could go no higher. The rest of the climb promised mostly rock and ice, and the route neared vertical in some places. But the summit was tantalizingly close. The warriors looked at one another, then at the carefully wrapped imperial standard that leaned against a nearby boulder.

The horses would be left behind, along with everything not absolutely essential for their push to the top. The tents were packed away, and the valuable armor set aside. All the climbers carried were the ropes and the emperor’s flag. There was no longer any imperial procession. No more glorious, celebrated quest. No more cheers or recognition, no more citizens bestowing gifts and honor. All that remained for the three men was the emperor’s simple command to plant his banner on the summit.

There were no witnesses. Who would ever see the standard and where it had been planted? How many years would pass before another man ventured this high to see the result of the warriors’ efforts? To retreat from the mountain at this point would be no shame… in fact, no one might ever know. What if, after all this, no one believed that the mission had actually been accomplished? There was no proof to be brought back.

Against all this doubt and uncertainty remained the word of the emperor, his standard, and the simple fact that this mountain indeed was his to claim. The only honor to be had was to participate in marking out the rightful claim of their lord. All this the warriors knew, and communicated unspoken to one another. The look in each man’s eyes spoke powerfully of the decision each had made in his heart.

The three climbers attacked the summit. It was a long ascent. How could anything look so close and still be so far away? Roping themselves together saved each of them on more than one occasion as handholds gave way and rocks crumbled under their feet. They inched upward, passing the banner from hand to hand as the ascent progressed. Merciless winds threatened to snatch them off the rocky cliffs. Then, swathed in cloud, they reached something of a level place to catch their breath. Looking about in the haze, they realized that there was no more mountain above them. This was indeed the summit. The imperial banner was carefully unfurled, and its staff driven into the cracked stone of the peak. It fluttered blue in the wind, the emperor’s personal crest flying above the highest part of his domain.

“As it should,” was the common silent thought of all three men. And they began to scale their way carefully back down from their perch at the top of the world.

Some years ago, this was the first Sunday sermon God ever gave me without a scripture. After hundreds of pulpit appearances, this was a serious paradigm shift. How could I preach God’s word without at least quoting a verse? But He showed me an incredible picture of what it is like to receive, dilute, recover, and succeed in God’s calling. In this picture is also a history of the church. We stand now in the valley with the oxcarts of treasure, deciding whether or not to lay aside the well-intentioned “weight that so easily besets us”. It is a hard choice and often an unpopular one.

Just in time for Fathers Day

2010-05-27T11:03:00.000-07:00

A speaker at a social work conference yesterday brought out an interesting note about our culture. He reminded us of the television characters who played fathers. I was reminded of "TV dads" such as Ward Cleaver, John Walton, Howard Cunningham, and Cliff Huxstable. Then the speaker asked, "Today, who's the TV dad who has been in front of our culture the longest?"

The answer?Homer Simpson.

Explains a lot, actually.

Profound?

2010-05-20T09:21:00.000-07:00

In speaking with someone about intercession last night, the following phrase popped out:
"Intercession is about lifting up, not about taking on."

Often, when we are called to intercede for someone, we take on the burden of their need. But that is not the point of intercession. In intercession, we lift that burden to God and offer it to Him, releasing it to His faithfulness. And we can only do this by faith. We are not called to batter the gates of heaven until a reluctant God finally does our bidding in order to shut us up. Our confidence is wholly in Him, not in our impact upon Him.

We are not alone

2010-05-07T18:40:00.000-07:00

"Denominations were important in bringing the Christian faith to the variegated areas of American life, especially to the frontier. Their value now is by no means as clear. Because their structure is organized to secure the preservation and extension of the larger institution, congregations that take their primary identity from their denominations cannot relate to the total life of a community. Thus, denominational organization tends to make congregations a force of division rather than of reconciliation in their communities. The result of this fragmentation is that denominationally defined local churches do not feel ultimately responsible for representing God’s reign in or to their area." --Elizabeth Achtemeier, 1984

A short errand and a long blessing

2010-05-07T18:20:00.000-07:00

A new friend was on the way to a home group meeting Wednesday when he had a flat about 30 miles from us. No spare. So, I hopped in the car and ran to Temple, just in time to help with a very small part of getting his family back on the road. I did very little (no modesty here, I just missed the hard work) but they were glad to see me and we got to visit for a bit. I am refreshed by their fervor and unmistakable love for Jesus.

Before I could leave, they wanted to pray for me, and this brother began matter-of-factly prophesying about facets of my life that I had not mentioned to anyone but the Father. Completely private issues that have troubled me no end. I was incredibly blessed, not so much because of some glowing revelation in the prophetic prayer, but by the intimate presence of my Father. And by the reminder of his attention to my deepest thoughts. But most of all, by how Dad seems to be able to put such troublesome private things into perspective. Without making me feel small, Dad seemed to say, "This is nothing dramatic. I'll tell anybody if it will help you come to me with such things! Why would you be afraid to open up to me? See how there is so much less anguish in it when your brother talks about it? Perhaps it's not so troublesome at all... to Me."

For those who struggle with the purpose of prophecy, here's a great clue. A word from the Lord which had the effect of pressing me more closely and intimately into Him.

The Most Sacred Cow of All

2010-04-26T10:27:00.000-07:00

I will ask the reader to read the following very carefully. There are so many assumptions about Christian meetings and such, that it is easy to line ourselves up in two groups: status quo, and anarchist. There is a third way, and yes, it is radical, but... well, just read on:

We must break the “scheduled weekly meeting” paradigm. This is a profound step for the religious, the sacrificial killing of the Christian Sabbath. This reality was pointed out to me some years ago, and I spent ten years arguing that our existing weekly meetings were not a bad thing in and of themselves, and could be reformed, renewed, and made to work. I am now convinced that I was wrong, and that I was hanging on simply because of tradition and a lack of any alternative vision. Changing the day of the week for the meeting does not help. If we decide to meet on Tuesday night, we will adapt—but not escape—our past patterns. Believers can accept almost any other change of activity: we can stop doing sermons, passing the plate, and meeting on Sunday morning. We can handle meeting in a house, not having a “pastor”, even having our group have no name. But discarding the scheduled weekly group meeting is so beyond the pale to most Christians that it begs the question: Who made the scheduled weekly meeting the linchpin of our Christian existence? How did we move from being identified by Jesus to being identified by our meetings? How did we move from being part of “the church” to being part of “our church”?

What challenges can we expect when we discard the regular weekly meeting? We can expect this move to be very revealing… and likely traumatic. When the Gospel came to the Jews, there was a backlash in some of them. Paul had to correct those who would turn their liberty to license, or who would feel free to sin “that grace may abound”. Other believers received the grace of Jesus with overpowering gratitude and the Spirit led them into lives of dedication and sacrifice that could never have been imagined under the character of law. In a very real way, our modern weekly meeting is rooted in the character of law to such a degree that we will not see its fruit until we get a safe viewing distance. Expect the abandonment of scheduled meetings to do several things:

It will reveal our hearts. If we were touching one another because of our love for one another, we will morph into new paradigms of connecting. If our participation in regular meetings is rooted in something else, we will find ourselves isolated, or at the least seeing much of our current fellowship wither. Too often, believers are together because of religious habit, a desire for doctrinal reinforcement, a sense of duty to the organization, or a need to be validated as Christians by their activities. Even positive things like the need to be fed and encouraged, or the desire to minister, if they are the primary reason for our attendance, will be revealed as a centering on self, and a dependence upon men, rather than Jesus.

It will expose the nature of our relationships. If our connection to other believers is grounded in common activity, losing that activity will break the connection. And we will soon look for others to whom we can relate on this shallow level. But if we have—or desire to have—actual relationship with our brothers and sisters, we will reorder our lives to pursue this. Relationship takes time and effort, far more time and effort than organizing and attending meetings.

It will create a time vacuum that begs to be filled, and will be filled by something. There is a strong temptation to fill that “meeting time”-- either to replace it with another “good” activity or to resist doing anything with it at all, and thus allowing the cares of this world to expand even further in our lives. It is a golden opportunity to be led by the Spirit instead of the schedule, but this must be pursued intentionally.

Can we even have a healthy “regularly-scheduled meeting”? I think the answer is a qualified “Yes”, but with a number of important observations:

I think meetings are to most Christians like a bar is to most alcoholics. And before you become too offended, consider the parallel. Once an addict realizes his dependency on alcohol to help manage his life, he finds that the first thing he must do is to put down the bottle. But this is only the beginning. Of primary importance is that he now sets his purpose to reordering his life. Remember, it is not so much the alcohol use itself that he must deal with, but the facets of his life that he managed with its assistance. During this period of reorientation, one keeps alcohol completely away from the addict. There is a shrieking void in the addict’s life that could be easily filled with a shot and a beer, so we shield the addict from that path. We essentially set a guardrail between him and this self-destructive answer to his life’s issues. And that guardrail is valuable until such a time as he strongly rejects alcohol as a valid life-management tool. When the now-former addict reaches this point, the guardrail can be safely replaced with simple markers, which do not bar the man from properly using alcohol, but which clearly remind him of its hazards.

The Christian can find himself in much the same paradigm. When I awake to the reality that I have ordered my spiritual life around meetings rather than around Christ himself, I know I have to back away from the meetings. But, while some Christian meetings do more harm than good, the quality of the meeting itself is not generally the issue. The Holy Spirit must reveal to me what I have been seeking from the meeting instead of seeking from Him. Identity, teaching, validity of our gifts and callings, worship or a devotional life—all these are facets of our spirit life that we may seek in meetings rather than in Christ.

So, I seek to reorder my life in the pursuit of God. And in this reorientation process, I avoid that to which I had addicted myself as I allow the Holy Spirit to fill the voids in my life as he wills. At this point, I avoid a commitment to meetings as the drunk shuns the honky-tonk. I press into Him who is my life to meet the needs of my heart. When my life is redirected in this path, I reject the very idea that men or their activities can validate my identity in Christ. I am a believer based on nothing more than him upon whom I have believed. This position in the Spirit frees me to touch meetings of the brothers in a pure way, to give and receive wholly of the Spirit. I can come and go among the church as freely as the resurrected Jesus passed through the walls of the upper room.

Martha R Us

2010-04-25T15:00:00.000-07:00

Luke 10:38-42 says:
As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!"

"Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."

Martha tells Jesus how busy she is, and how much there is to do, and He replies, “You are worried and upset about many things.” If he said that to us, we would take it as a compliment. “Yes, Lord, you know how it is. SO much to do! I’m in charge of the bake sale and I’m on the pastor search committee, and we’re remodeling the living room. If you would just get Mary off her… well, get her to come and help me. Then we could really serve you!”

I love the language in the exchange between Martha and Jesus. You see Martha’s assumption and cluelessness, and Jesus’ gentleness. I love this exchange because it sounds so much like us.

“Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself?” Listen to the assumption behind Martha’s question: “There are important people here. They need to be fed, housed, tended to. My house needs to be cleaned, ordered and made suitable for Jesus! There is no time for sitting and talking right now. We have to get busy and serve the Lord! Don’t you get it, Lord?”

The assumption is so strong that it even leads Martha into a bizarre foolishness. In her first sentence, she calls Jesus “Lord”, and in the second sentence she actually commands him to do something about Mary. The reality is that the task at hand was truly lord of the moment. Serving the Lord took precedence over the Lord himself.

The question Martha does not ask: “Why is Jesus here in the first place?”

I hear unspoken things in Jesus that He wants Martha to work out for herself. “Do I care that Mary has left what everyone expects of her to be still and listen to me? Do I care that she has incurred your disrespect and anger to do so? Yes, I care very much about that. And I will reward her for it.”

Martha, did you realize that you are actually trying to rob your sister of her blessing, to get her to follow you, instead of following me? Well, it’s not going to happen today.”

Note that Jesus does not tell Martha to stop doing what she’s doing. Most often, telling one of us to stop “serving the Lord” is to give an instruction we will never heed. We are like a dog chasing a car at a dead run. The Master’s whistle does not call us back. Only when the car has sped out of sight do we stop and trudge back to the yard. Then, we may get an opportunity to hear our Lord.

Measuring sticks?

2010-04-19T11:34:00.001-07:00

I'm contemplating how we continually, even unconsciously, measure things in the kingdom. A friend talks about getting up at 5 AM to pray each morning-- and this is taken as a measure of piety. I write a check to a charity-- and it measures generosity. A thousand people attend the club down the street-- which is a measure of success and of the favor of God. A man confesses horrible sins from his past, and we see him as a more impressive work of redemption than we find in his neighbor. A sister extensively quotes scripture from memory, so this is a measure of respect for scripture and of the validity of her beliefs.

Immediate question: why are we performing these measurements?

Sailing Stones

2010-04-08T12:07:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across a letter written years ago to a dear friend who is an elder in the city. He has probably long forgotten it. It speaks to me still.

Dear Charlie,

It’s more radical that we think.

To those of us who have been long exposed to the idea of the church in the city, it is simple logic. Explaining the concept confounds us. It is like asking my young son David, “How do you throw a rock?” David looks at you in amazement, picks up a rock and says, “Like this!” and throws it. Not only is no further explanation necessary, it would require some skill to develop one.

See it, recognize it, do it.

Describe the church in the city to someone with no religious background, and they grasp it readily. But try to share the reality with a traditional, church-going Christian, and it can actually traumatize them at first. Go back to my little boy with the rock. My friend John is walking along with us. All his life, he has been surrounded by rocks. Rocks are a part of his life experience. He walks on them in the road, sees them mortared into walls, arranges them neatly in his Japanese garden. But he has been told all his life that rocks belong on the ground. That is where they come from, that is where they go. Every time he ever picked one up and dropped it, it returned immediately to its rightful position snuggled against the planet’s surface. John takes no little comfort in the eternal certainty of the place of rocks in his universe. It never occurred to John that a rock could fly through the air. Birds fly. Rocks do not fly.

Then a little boy with no significant experience with rocks breaks the rule. A mere child, who knows nothing of roadbeds and flagstone paths, of rock gardens or stone walls; a lad who has never seen the pyramids of Giza or the Great Wall, takes a rock and sails it through the air.

John actually breathes a sigh of relief when the rock lands in the road ahead. “That’s more like it,” he thinks to himself, “I knew that’s where that rock belonged.” But David is now enthralled with the flight of the rock. So he picks up another and hurls it. A little more arc, and a bit more distance this time. Another rock, and yet another sails through the summer afternoon.

“David, stop that!” John finally says in exasperation. “Leave the rocks in the road where they belong.” And the boy, respectful of his elders as I want him to be, leaves his rock-throwing. At least until John goes home. But somehow I do not believe the little boy has yet been created who ever lost his fascination with throwing rocks… adult approval or no.

David knows stones can fly because he is involved in making it so. The fact that they come back to earth does not dissuade him. There is always another one nearby. Another stone flight into space is only as far away as the end of his arm.

Unlike Jesus, I cannot resist explaining the parable. My friend John is the traditional Christian, who grew up, as his fathers before him, belonging to a church; following and paying its pastor, and finding his service to God within its walls. Everyone in his acquaintance did the same thing. They had different churches, but they were really all the same. They operated in the same way, has the same requirements of their members, held the same place in the community. It never occurred to John that they could do more, be more. John is a stone nestled comfortably in the earth, where all self-respecting stones should be.

David is one of those lively stones. They can go where they have never been, and come to rest again. They are more than just pieces of the earth. They are solid, but they are not stuck. These Christians come to rest where the Master throws them, some near, some far. Some in great pile of stones, some in solitary places. They are fitted together only by His hand.

John is distressed by this vision. He sees chaos where order should reign. He envisions a cloud of stones flying like driven hail. This cannot be allowed! What will happen to the road, the walls, his house if stones are allowed to fly? Please, please, put them down and leave them on the ground before someone gets hurt. Fear rules. John certainly cannot trust a little boy with such things. A mature stone mason might have the credibility to change John’s mind about stones, but such men spend their lives cementing stones into walls of their own design. Their stones will not, cannot ever fly.

Charlie, you are a boy who knows the stones can fly. You were blessed to be raised by spiritual, rather than religious, men. They never built the stones into their own walls. You have also walked with men who did just that, men who hoped you would become foundation material for their own houses. But that is not to be. And for that, I thank God! Know that you will create opposition without intending to do so, and be content. Be patient and love the brothers, even those who oppose you. Stand where God calls you to stand.

As elders in the city, as under-shepherds to the Chief Shepherd, one of our challenges is to resist divvying up the flock among ourselves. Sometimes that means correcting a fellow-laborer who is discreetly placing his own marks on the Master’s sheep. In a religious society where authority often comes from how many sheep bear your mark, it takes courage to refuse to own the sheep and to challenge that practice based only on our relationship to the Shepherd.

I am reminded more and more as my natural and religious resume gets well and thoroughly trashed, that the only authority I ever had was in Him. I used to be somebody in my own eyes, and had the track record to prove it. Now, about all I have is what He has done in me. I think that’s a good thing, but my soul has not caught up with it just yet.

We have a sacred trust to present a pure virginal bride, not one who has been married to us first while waiting for the Bridegroom. Do not be discouraged. If you can imagine the King of Glory being grateful to people like us, think of His response to the elders of a church who belongs purely and only to Him.

Love,
Charles Rolland

Grasping at the Wrong Thing

2010-03-28T17:49:00.000-07:00

From a discussion on another board, a brother was talking about what he sees in house churches. He said:
As for the early church, initially their meetings were patterned after the synagogue, which gave them a good framework from which to be able to develop their own meeting style. Today we're kinda having to rediscover that pattern, as the modern church has become so event-oriented, being driven by the whole pastor/layman division within the church that has made "churchianity" into a spectator sport. So we're kinda having to rediscover a more relational way of gathering together as the body of Christ.

Here was my take:
This is a great challenge, because the mere fact that we are trying to rediscover an old pattern locks us into that which is foreign to us, no less than the clergy/laity pattern may be foreign to us. Many denominations spring from finding dead-end practices and responding with the idea that, "Let's try to figure out how to do this right".

It is the "doing this" that hampers our search for relational Christianity. Rather than doing what is in front of us, we try to create something religious to do. It's dangerous to point out even the most benign of recorded practices, as we tend to latch onto any positive example like a Rottweiler on a rib-eye. And in so doing, we adopt the result, instead of grasping what created the result.

Take the Jerusalem church, for example. These folks continued to do just what they had been doing all their lives-- getting together to eat, going to the temple, praying together, hanging out together, giving to the poor. This was not a "form", it was life they already knew. The advent of Messiah simply gave them a new focus that touched every part of their lives. Eating at the neighbor's house was now saturated with talk about Jesus. Almsgiving developed a new level of organization, probably because the local synagogues were not so keen to care for those heretical Jesus-following widows. Learning the will of God became much more than weekly Torah-reading, and centered around learning from Jesus' most experienced followers-- the apostles. Wanna guess who was speaking in the temple courts to all those believers?

This was not a change in practices, but a change in meaning! We continue to try to change practices in an effort to find more meaning. But that's like trying to find a cure for meningitis by studying the effect of aspirin on a fever.

I would suggest that this is much more simple, and far more difficult, than we suspect. Do you have friends? Eat with them! When everyone talks about his own life, your contribution to the conversation will be about what Jesus is doing. Rather than starting with how to "have a group" or "hold a meeting", just start relating to the people in front of you, without the artificial expectation that they will accept an invitation to your "meeting". (That kind of artificiality always sounds like some sort of sneaky Amway recruiting to me, anyway.) Jesus said that people would recognize Him as we love one another. Loving one another is not the product of a meeting, whether in an ancient cathedral or a tiny apartment. If we find ourselves struggling with how to express love for one another outside the dynamic of a meeting, then that's a clear sign the meeting is actually a problem, not a solution. And a different format won't change that.

If I were to advise a course of action, I would say to put someone's feet under your dining table several times a week and love them and feed them. Keep doing this until WE are changed, until those people become part of us, and we need no meeting or address or title to identify ourselves as such.

Closed circuit to my Texas friends

2010-03-10T11:10:00.000-08:00

5,000 years from now...

Archeologists continue to unearth a series of small ancient west Texas towns of the American period, and find an unusually consistent commonality among them. Each and every one of these villages had, as its largest edifice, a central temple of worship for what appeared to be local deities. All the temples had a central arena of precisely the same size, the only variation being the amount of seating provided for worshipers. Other finds include ancient calendars which depicted armored warriors and virginal priestesses of these local gods along with paens of praise to the gods, paid for by various merchants. Some gods were represented by animals such as Lions, Buffaloes and Badgers, while other temples featured monoliths at their north ends dedicated to weather phenomena, bearing titles like Golden Tornadoes and Blizzards, as well as ancient heroic archetypes such as Cowboys and Matadors. One great temple, referenced often in ancient archives of newsprint rolls, was supposedly located near the city of Odessa, where the great Panther was evidently worshiped by tens of thousands, but scholars who have examined the extreme reports of dedication of that city's citizens to their god still consider the tales too exaggerated to be anything other than legend.

Today's quote:

2010-03-08T10:18:00.000-08:00

"They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out." -- Aslan in The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis

Man, that'll preach.

Laying Down The Law

2010-02-23T12:33:00.000-08:00

My take, from a board discussing whether believers are under some form of law:

Law is not authority. It is, rather, the one-off connection of man to authority. In our country, we elect people who make laws, which we then obey. So, obedience to the law is, in fact, a submission to the public consensus. The actual authority over us -- our "King"-- is 51% of the votes cast. But as it is impractical to hold a citywide vote every time someone jaywalks, we use law to effectively enforce the authority of the 51%. Law is the indirect application of authority.

The reason believers are not subject to law is that we have no more need of a one-off connection to divine authority. We are in Christ, who is our King. Law is extended to those who are beyond the direct relationship. In this case, those who do not believe. Those of us who are in Christ are ruled directly by Him, not indirectly via law.

It is helpful to me to understand the term "the law of Christ" in the same way as I understand "the law of gravity". "Law" in this construct means an understanding of the essential nature of a thing, rather than rules promulgated. IMO, the law of Christ is not rules promulgated by Christ, but a revelation of His person. Just as the "law of gravity" is a revelation of a part of our physical reality.

Time is Money, Just Maybe

2010-02-19T10:47:00.000-08:00

I recently listened to an appeal by two nice young ladies who are doing children's ministry. They were asking for two things: more volunteers, and financial support so they could do this work full time. As a working stiff, I must confess I thought, "You want more time AND more money? That money you are asking for, well, I have to spend time earning it. I can't take Friday off and give you the money I would have earned that day."

I was not offended, for these folks were doing "ministry" the old fashioned way: ask to be hired as a ministry professional and then when you realize a few professionals are not up to the task at hand, ask for more help. Next time, it will be overseas ministry, or ministry to the aged, or to the sick. Send those folks on the rounds to raise support yet again. From the same brothers who had their wallet out last week. It's not the heart of the people that's causing ministry to struggle, it's the methodology.

Today I thought of a possible solution for my friends who are doing brick-and-mortar church ministry like this. What if you asked believers for time in lieu of money? The average Joe out here cannot go to meetings and ask for more money to support his calling as a bus driver or a teacher or social worker. We take our wages and make do. Then church members give a portion of those earnings over to their local group. But if your religion club sees a ministry as important, why not say--
"We'd like you to stop giving cash and give time instead. Instead of giving $100 this week, take a day of your vacation time and come serve soup to the poor for the day. Only put cash in the plate if you can't take a day off work to teach children or take elderly folks to the doctor."

We already do this with our "retired" members. If they can't give, they can drive the Meals On Wheels van. But most of us wage earners just can't do this under our current way of thinking. But value my time like you value my money? That can be very motivating.

Result? If this really takes hold, we get many more volunteers and much less cash flow to the institution. More willing hands, but more money left in their pockets to pay the bills. More work gets done, but the organization will have to pare down. Fewer professionals, more servants. People who can't afford to write a check can actually give more and feel like their contribution is appreciated.

If we are truly longing to see a work get done, this concept will get somebody excited. But if we are trying to make sure that "our church" has a thriving program, it will fall on deaf ears.

New Ad Slogan For Christians

2010-02-04T11:15:00.000-08:00

I realize that I post a lot in other places and some of those thoughts need to migrate over to the blog. So, here's something adapted from a recent exchange on a discussion board:

Friend:
"Lord I believe; help my unbelief. The more I learn to love humanity the less I love people.

"These 2 old saying kind of describe where I am. I no longer have any use for the institutional church with all the politics and guilt trips. I am still attending some but I really get nothing from this type of service. I think our family will start meeting at our house and invite folks to join us."

Charles:
I hear you.

Here's a thought to chew on about meeting at home. The whole idea of 'meeting' is pretty foreign to how we live at home. Meetings have agendas and expectations which turn into schedules and liturgy and organizations.

I have been in more home groups and house churches than I can count, and most wound up looking more or less just like Wednesday night services. We repeat what we know, whether we want to or not. It's just like when a man declares, "I'll never be like my father," and thirty years later, voila! He's just like old Dad. (Sorry, Dad. No offense!)

I have a radical suggestion that we change the entire basis for our getting together. Acts 2 says that the disciples devoted themselves to fellowship and eating together (among other good things). What if we started from here, instead of from "the apostle's doctrine"? Come sit at my dining table! We'll eat, and we'll visit. If there is something of the Spirit in us, it will come out. If we need to pray, we'll pray. But instead of tacking on eating and fellowship as "after we dismiss" activities because, let's face it, we did not do them during church services, let's start in a new place instead. And thus my new proposed slogan--

"Dinner! It's what's for church."

cm

Samaritan in Camo

2009-12-12T13:30:00.000-08:00

Had a nice experience the other day. Seated next to the window at Starbucks, with a long line at the counter. Suddenly a young soldier (maybe 22-23?) in the line jumped out of the line and sprinted for the front door. My head swiveled as he hit the door and I saw a ragged old man outside on the sidewalk, where he had apparently fallen. From his appearance, he could have been my grandpa or a local wino. But this young man spotted his fall, rushed to his side, insisted on helping him up, and then stood by to make sure he was all right, over the man's protestations. After the man was under his own power and headed on down the sidewalk, the soldier returned to the line as though nothing had happened.

I was impressed by both his rate of response-- no hesitation about losing his place in line, or stopping to see if anyone standing near the man would help first-- and by his quiet insistence on seeing the man safely on his way. (And I'm a little chagrined that he blew past me to get the job done.) Nice work, young man.

A Nation of Sprinters

2009-11-18T11:13:00.000-08:00

(RANT WARNING: Readers seeking cool, reasoned spiritual things, please scroll past...)

America is a nation of sprinters. Fast out of the gate, strong at the start, able to bring tremendous assets and effort together in a short time in pursuit of a goal. It’s easy to put this in government terms, so let’s get closer to home. What do we love? What do we celebrate? The hot start-up company gets the ink, not the long-term industry: Gillette makes razor blades and generates money while Yahoo! makes news and generates headlines. We know the rookie of the year, while the career-wins guy is a statistical footnote. We pay $5000 to the rapid weight-loss clinic instead of spending $500 in the produce aisle and $100 on walking shoes. Americans watched the made-for-TV attack on Baghdad with rapt interest, and now with hundreds of thousands of boots on the ground, we have no idea what’s going on. We blasted FEMA for being slow to get to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, but that same government has to let every highway bridge and overpass rot because we can’t see why we should have to pony up taxes for them. We complain about our lawmakers doing things we don’t understand while we won’t sit still for more than a 30-second CNN sound bite before reaching for the remote.

Our world view is the short view.

Our national slogan should be, “Hurry! Hurry! What?” In the words of Havner, we “go up like rockets and come down like rocks.”

Welcome to the good ol’ USofADD.

And dear readers, many of you are at this very moment having the same thought: “Well then, tell us what to do about it.” A paragraph of clever rant in print and we are ready to take action. Ready, fire, aim. On that horse and riding off in all directions. We are a nation that has confused response time with positive action. Mistaken activity for accomplishment. And here are three simple steps we can take right now to get back on the right track: (Get real. Did you really not get that joke? It’s our appetite for “three quick steps” to anything that has formed us into a people with the attention span of a fruit fly. Everyone who thought there were going to be three steps, go back to the start of this rant and read it slowly…)

Life is not so simplistic, and it’s time we grew up and faced it. Time that we stopped looking for the quick fix, the short cut, the trite and simple answer to ancient and complex problems. And it’s high time we stopped believing people who offer these things and stopped buying their books. (By the way, next time you are in the self-help section of Barnes and Noble, ask yourself, “Now which of these books is going to dramatically change my life? And for only $17.95?”) Then put it back.

Stop and think. Okay, that’s a simple step, but it’s not the secret panacea to anything. But it might just slow down the our mental hyperdrive long enough for us to realize at least one thing we had failed to consider before. And having done that, we might think a bit more and discover more. And such a radical approach might help us toward solutions instead of mere reactions.

I am a proponent of a new set of heroes. That elderly man-- the one who takes care of his wife who is stricken with Alzheimer’s and can’t remember who he is-- is my hero. That thirty-year veteran second grade teacher is my hero. The kid who threw papers and mowed yards and said “You want fries with that?” until he wanted to puke-- all to buy his cheap first car; he is my hero. That lady who’s been in night school for six years is my hero. That couple who have stayed married for sixty years are my heroes. The man who saved up for five years and bought a new car with cash is my hero. Nobody on this list got there the easy way, or the fast way. They passed on opportunities for easier answers and more comfortable paths. They discovered that what is worthwhile, costs. And they paid the price. And we —not just they— are the richer for it.

What to do, what to do

2009-10-27T18:40:00.000-07:00

The interesting thing here is that while the structural problems with today's religion club structure are quite complex, the ways I see to respond are so far fairly simple. Let's start with...

Make friends --real friends-- with believers outside your club. I grew up in a very exclusive religion club where we were not encouraged to do this. When God gave me godly friends outside my group, my whole view on the church changed irrevocably. It's also hard to get trapped inside your club when that would exclude your own BFF.

If you are a member of a club, ask a leader to explain things to you. This may be tricky, because it's probably going to come off as a challenge. So pick a leader of your club who knows you and who won't get offended if you ask pointed questions. Buy lunch. Maybe several. Ask directly why your club does not have a whole lot of meaningful relationships with other local clubs. Ask him how he feels about you splitting your Sunday time up between your club and the clubs of your friends. Don't be sidetracked by minor issues. Ask, and sincerely try to understand, why he thinks your club should exist when there are lots of other clubs in town. See if he has vision beyond the club; you'd be surprised how many leaders do, and are afraid to follow what they see. Encourage him!

If you are not a member of a club, check out your friend's club. Don't join, just look for other believers to be friends with. By the way, there's no need to bang heads about joining, just tell anyone who offers that you are already his brother or sister and that's good enough for you. Small groups are a great way to do this, by the way. It's hard to really meet anyone at Sunday Services, but a club's small group or a class or home group works great. Make friends.

Look for service projects outside your club. Substitute this for a club activity if you have limited time available. Sling hash at a soup kitchen, build a Habitat house, mentor a kid at a Boys Club. The more servant-like and the less visible the job the better. You meet a tremendous grade of people this way. Make friends.

That'll do for a start...

Is “Winning the World for Christ” Killing My Neighbors?

2009-10-15T10:05:00.000-07:00

Great institutions have great dreams, or at least great aspirations. The most widely-claimed of these found in the evangelical church is found in the slogan, “Win the world for Christ!”. This is a noble and seemingly-inarguable aspiration. After all, who do we not hope will follow Jesus? For whom has Christ not died? As it is the Father’s express desire that “not any should perish”, should we not all embrace this as our life’s cause?

Well, at the risk of heresy, I’m not so sure.

How does the great task of “winning the world for Christ” actually manifest itself among us? On the positive, it has stirred many of us with a concern for those outside our own cultures, and has sent the message of the gospel into the far corners of the world. I have numerous friends in places like Uganda, Kenya, Morocco, China, Ukraine, and Afghanistan. I have a friend who is a missionary from Nigeria to the U.S. (As much as that may offend some, I see the same desperate needs he sees in our post-Christian culture.) I clearly see the work of the Holy Spirit in these callings.

But I fear the very grandiosity of the language we use has borne unintended consequences. After many years in the church, I do not see today’s believer to be any more likely to bear witness of the life of Christ to his neighbor than was his grandfather. In fact, a strong argument can be made that today’s Joe Christian is less likely to impact the family next door than perhaps ever before in American history.

Our drumbeat of “winning the world” has contributed to what I call the “myopia effect” among the church. Our suburban church loads up a hundred fired-up teens and takes them to a Mexican border town, or to the urban jungle of a large city, all in the interest of ministering to the lost. And they do it with great fervor. But that busload of kids drives right past our own blighted neighborhoods on the way out of town to “spread the gospel”. We can now see so far out “into the world” that our own neighbors have become only vague and fuzzy images to us. While we are able to communicate our thrill in “going into all the world”, we are much less effective at sharing God’s concern for the people who live within our own zip code. I do not think this is intentional neglect so much as romantic overlook. As a veteran missionary once told me, “There’s no magic in a plane ticket.”

When is the last time your congregation was asked for money to support a missionary living in the African interior? That fellow who is on furlough from Africa brought his Powerpoint presentation—it used to be slides, but Microsoft marches on—and everyone enjoyed the exotic photos of strange peoples in strange lands. You wondered at how those people were SO much more receptive to the gospel than are Americans. But when was the last time you considered the same kind of financial support for one living in the barrio in your own city? We get far more excited about unbelievers overseas than unbelievers in our neighborhood.

Our religious traditions are not making it any easier for us to touch the lives of our neighbors. Joe lives across the street from me, and his church home is across town. He saw that fellowship advertised on a billboard, and chose that group from a wide assortment of congregations, based on his compatibility with its doctrines and demographics, and on the attractiveness of its programs and public offerings. As Joe’s neighbors, we know that Joe loads up the family on Sunday and “goes to church”, and he has a fish on the back of his car, so we figure he’s a Christian, but we don’t know a lot more. Joe’s family is heavily involved in church activities, which are constantly expanding in an effort to grow the size of that fellowship. As a result, there is created a natural division of activity—the religious stuff, the “God stuff” happens across town, while the mundane everyday stuff happens here. There, Joe worships. There, he expresses his devotion to God and talks about it with others. Over here, he mows his lawn and takes his kid to Little League. We know if Joe has crabgrass, but we don’t see much of his Christian walk.

Joe is not intentionally neglecting his neighbors. But the epicenter of his “Christian life” is far from his neighborhood, and what happens here is a faint echo of what happens there. And so long as his local religion club maintains the steady call to “come to church” and “come with us and do good things”, this dynamic will continue.

The solution is simple, but counter-intuitive for most professional clergy and folks interested in “building our church”. Tell people to go home. Yep. Start carving out parts of the week when no “church activities” will be scheduled. Rather than recruiting and training people to teach Sunday school, teach them how to love their neighbors. Truly loving one’s neighbor is the most effective way of bringing people to Jesus. Most believers in my experience testify that they came to Christ mainly because of the actions of some non-clergy individual who loved them.

Now for the warning: this suggestion is much more radical than it seems, and far harder than I make it out to be. For I am suggesting that a local religion club begin to do things that are not consistent with the future of the club. That they choose against the club’s best interest to sow believers into the community. I am suggesting that they begin to seek for their members to identify less with First Church and more with Jesus, to serve their neighbors even if the club’s programs languish. This is a hard enough sell in and of itself. But in our competitive religious marketplace, the inevitable reaction will be for the religion club next door to quickly redouble its recruiting efforts, with the distinct possibility that once Religion Club A sends its members out into the community, Religion Club B will scoop up half of them and entice them into the building down the street for the hot new version of American Churchgoing’s Greatest Hits. Clergymen seem to know this reality almost instinctively and find it nearly impossible to embrace the kind of change that would put “their flock” at risk of changing membership to the club next door.

So with these obstacles in mind, what can we do to help this along?

More to come…

To Our Public Frogs

2009-10-13T11:35:00.000-07:00

"But where else will I exercise my gifts?"

I'm beginning to notice that this unspoken question is keeping any number of folks inside the religion clubs. As a former pulpit preacher, worship leader, elder, and musician, I understand the quandry, and that understanding is what disturbs me.

It goes on in the mind of a person who is considering changing his identity from "First Whichever Church" to the kingdom of God. "But I'm a preacher!" I say. "Where will I preach? I'm a worship leader! Where will I set up my microphone and plug in my amp?" As if scheduling people to attend a gathering is a prerequisite for doing what I am called to do. What I am really asking, and cannot readily admit, is, "Who will be required to listen to me if their attendance at my performance is not mandated by tradition?"

I know, I've quit preaching and gone to meddling. But those of you who have gifts which are now used to serve the Body in the regularly-scheduled gathering we call a "church service"-- what would you do if those doors closed? Would you stop doing what you do? Would you know how to continue to obey God and employ your gifts with no church service involved? Or are you only useful in organized groups of a dozen to five thousand? If your calling is being defined and delimited by a tradition of Sunday-go-to-meetin', who really called you?

Yes, this is an out-and-out challenge. If singing Jesus Loves Me with your toddler is less satisfying than playing in a hot worship band at church, it's time to ask yourself what it is that drives your worship. If explaining who Jesus is to a ditchdigger on the tailgate of the truck is somehow not as fulfilling as giving a 50-minute oratorio before a packed house of shoutin', stompin', on-fire believers... perhaps it's a good idea to ask God why this is so.

It's easy to tell people all the different ways that our gifts can be manifest in the earth. We've done it many times. And we all nod... and head right back to the pulpit/microphone/public venue and go on with business as usual, either as performers or spectators. (Insert head shake here.) Until we as "gifted individuals" are willing to go to the Father for a bit of personal examination, this dynamic is likely to continue. And the only way for God to shake us into looking deeply into this will be to break up our "ministries". Perhaps it would be wise to fall on the rock this time, to keep it from having to fall on us.

Been there myself. Waited for the rock, got it. Trust me, it smarts.

Today's Quote

2009-10-06T10:48:00.000-07:00

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Take Your Child To Work Day

2009-09-24T11:00:00.000-07:00

I had the privilege of praying for a couple of missionaries from Afghanistan last night at home group. It's a pretty prophetic group, so if you ask for prayer, you usually get somewhat more.

There was a word for a brother named Jonathan that I think bears repeating. In essence, it reminded him that even on that mission field, that God's primary interest was in him, and the mission was secondary. This seems strange to us, who tend to measure things in terms of jobs and callings and ministries and measurable results of our labors. I was reminded that when God placed Jonathan in Afghanistan, it was not as though God posted a want ad and hired the qualified applicant. It was that God was doing something and wanted to share that with his child.

Ministry is truly like "Take Your Child To Work Day". God is doing something in the earth, and he calls us to Himself, taking us along to join in. His invitation is not based on what talent He sees in us, nor on what He thinks we will accomplish, but simply on the fact that we are his sons. I fear that we have made ministry into a job fair, looking at the options, finding what line of work suits us best and finding a way to sign on. If it's a paying gig, all the better. But this process establishes me as the central worker, the work as my place to shine, and "for God" as the fish on my business card.

I would suggest that we allow our minds to be renewed, from a mindset that says, "This is the thing I will accomplish for God," to a more childlike "Dad, where are you going today? What are you doing? Can I go? Please? Can I help?"

If you truly wish to see wonderful things, try following Dad to work.

Agricultural wisdom

2009-09-11T16:37:00.000-07:00

This is better than anything I've written in a while, so I am unabashedly stealing it from my daughter Megan and posting it here--

I've never been one that God gave visions to, never heard words for people, or could distinctly hear his voice (without questioning myself). It never bothered me too much. I just figured our relationship wasn't like that---

Well, tonight during worship one of the speakers asked God to "tear us up" to give us a new vision of God and his love- This guided my prayers as I beseeched God-
"Make me sensitive to your spirit God..."
He gave me this---

I saw my life as hard ground.
Soil comfortably in place, not touched for an extended period of time.
A few sprouts have emerged from this soil but non significant in size or splendor

God gave me the image of this ground, not looking at it with disgust or disappointment but full of thought as he considered his plan.
A plan to till up the soil of my life that I have let remain motionless.
I felt only anticipation and excitement from my father as the ground began to display texture- No hint of hurry or frustration-
For he plans to grow so much in me; he expects a great harvest to come forth from me.

He showed me how I have cut myself off from his life by allowing myself to become sedimentary. The ground he showed me receives minimal nourishment from above as most of the rain is unable to soak in and therefore runs off-
The soil thrives because of the sustenance it has stored below. The relationship with him and the knowledge of his word have not evaporated; it is firmly in place- but it does not grow; it does not reap the harvest of the king-

My loving father knows me so well- Oh how he knows every uncertainty, every fear, every weakness, all of my hidden frailty he considers-

He carefully showed me in that moment that this ground could continue on in its current state--
No evil would occur, no angry wrath would ensue, no love withheld- even a minimal amount of growth would sustain---
But to continue on in its current state the ground would never reap the full harvest of God.

Oh my glorious creator- how I indeed comprehended the nature of psalms and the inability to call you by any other name than Marvelous- I need not to work in the soil, I need not tire in the sun - The only thing you require of my is to let go of this “life” I’ve created and become sensitive to your spirit-

You indeed are a glorious father; my only desire is to stay in your presence-

Brother Lawrence

2009-08-30T13:34:00.000-07:00

I'm re-reading Brother Lawrence's "The Practice of the Presence of God". I'm reminded of a Bible class I once attended that required you to be able to testify about your "salvation experience". The suggestion was made that if you could not recount the point in time that you were saved, said salvation might be in doubt. This was always problematic for me, as I have no recollection of my days prior to belief in Christ, such reality being inculcated in me from the earliest age. I "walked the aisle" as a boy, as did most of my acquaintances, but could not really identify this as a starting point with God.

Brother Lawrence's testimony is even less categorical, but far more profound:

"The first time I saw Brother Lawrence was on the 3rd of August, 1666. He told me that God had done him a singular favor in his conversion at the age of eighteen. During that winter, upon seeing a tree stripped of its leaves and considering that, within a little time, the leaves would be renewed and, after that, the flowers and fruit appear; Brother Lawrence received a high view of the providence and power of God which has never since been effaced from his soul. This view had perfectly set him free from the world and kindled in him such a love for God, that he could not tell whether it had increased in the forty years that he had lived since."

Would that I were "perfectly set free from the world", and to the place where over forty years of life marked no change in the constancy of my own love for God.

Lawrence, a Carmelite monk, lived in the latter half of the seventeenth century and his words are remain inspiring and challenging over four hundred years later. I wonder how many writings of that century have continued to be regularly published and remain as important and relevant as this little collection of thoughts?

Worried or concerned?

2009-08-29T07:39:00.000-07:00

A friend was looking for an illustration of differentiating "concern" and "worry". Best I can tell, "concern" is about what God has told you to handle, and "worry" is about what God has said He will handle. The wandering Israelite would concern himself with gathering up the morning's harvest of manna for his household, as this is a task God assigned to him. But he would be foolish to worry about the next day's manna delivery, as this is something God said He would take care of.

Other ideas?

From freedom to hostility

2009-08-17T16:57:00.000-07:00

According to a story on CNN today, two school administrators are going on trial soon for offering a prayer over a meal at the dedication of a new field house in Pace, Florida. Both face six months in jail after the ACLU got a judge to sign a consent decree banning any such prayers at Pace High School. Saying grace over a meal at Pace High has thus been criminalized. And the criminals are two men who defied American jurisprudence by offering a simple thanks for a plate of food.

This is not a screed about anybody's "rights". I'll leave that to others. I just post this to remind us that our form of government is not only no longer friendly to religious expression, but has become actively hostile to Christianity. I am not suggesting that we try to get the government to change this, because they will not. While I respect those who fight these things in the courts, the long-term prognosis is entirely negative. This case is no great watershed moment. The current actions are a mere logical continuation of a direction begun over forty years ago in the U.S.

We have the opportunity to pull our heads out of the sand now, say goodbye to the antiquated fiction of a so-called "Christian nation", and prepare ourselves for ongoing conflict with the government. Or we can continue in our ill-considered and outdated view of "God and Country" until the day when we will publicly say about God only what Country tells us we can say. In that day, we will have embraced a new "Lord".

Those of us who continue to think our modern Caesar is a Christian will most certainly find out differently. The reality is already clear. The choice is only whether to recognize it sooner and later.

We face a challenge to our citizenship, to our allegiance. The time is rapidly approaching when acknowledgment of a heavenly King will place us in jeopardy of the earthly kings. In Pace, Florida, that day has evidently arrived.

It is well that we have a greater citizenship than an American one...

The Members-Only (Straight)jacket

2009-08-12T12:05:00.000-07:00

"...for we are all members of one body..." --Paul, to the Ephesians

If we as believers are indeed all members of one body, what is that Brother Doe joins when he departs First Great Big Church and "places membership" at First Church On The Corner? It is not "the church" he joins, for whether Joe is part of FCOTC or not, he is a member of the body of Christ, the church. No, this is a membership in a local religion club. And unfortunately, one with a very bad habit.

Now, one can join the Gideons and still be a member of First Baptist. One can be join Campus Crusade and still be a member of Second Street Church of Christ. One can join the Navigators and still be a member in good standing of Third Avenue Presbyterian. But hardly any of the local brick-and-mortar religion clubs will encourage... or even countenance... simultaneous membership in one of the other local clubs. That is, each local club claims, by virtue of your placing membership, your exclusive identity with their club.

So, since First Church gets exclusive claim to your "membership", what does that mean? It's something of a contract, a commitment. Some groups even have you sign a "covenant" with them. In this contract, the club can expect your regular attendance at its meetings, your regular monetary contributions to its treasury, and your participation in its activities. And believe me, they expect it. For your part, you are allowed to identify yourself with the club, and at some time in the future, perhaps even be part of club leadership. All the other things you get with your membership --public teaching, worship, fellowship--are generally open to non-members as well.

As contracts go, this one is quite one-sided. "Agree to support us and we will agree to let you!"

But the truly objectionable part of this is the "branding" of the new member. The new member of First Church is no longer just "a Christian" and no longer belongs just "to Jesus". He now wears a new label, and when asked, is expected to say, "I'm a Baptist," or "I'm a Pentecostal," instead. This new brand tells the fellow with a different club brand, "I'm not one of you. I'm one of US!" And the divine idea of us all being members one of another becomes a theological expression with only a faint echo of reality.

I wear only one Man's brand. I'll fellowship my brothers and sisters in whatever club they want to join. But they'll have to pardon me if I don't "place membership". I'm already a member of the only group that will ever have exclusive claim to my identity. To use a very old-fashioned phrase, I'm "spoken for".

Another quote

2009-08-07T10:33:00.000-07:00

When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself. --Mark Twain

Quote of the day

2009-08-02T17:17:00.000-07:00

He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice. -Albert Einstein

Ultimate vanity: Quoting onesself

2009-08-02T16:42:00.000-07:00

I found this sentence in a letter I once wrote to a friend and consulting client. In contrast to my usual verbosity, this one is short and to the point:

"It is better to follow God than to follow good."

Checking out the plants

2009-07-30T10:28:00.000-07:00

With the phrase "church plant" now firmly ensconced in our religious lexicon, may I be permitted to ask just what the heck it means?

Now, I understand that if one travels where the church of Jesus Christ is a largely-unknown quantity, one may begin to share Jesus, to make disciples, and thus "plant" something that was not there before. To those who do this, may your eternal reward be great!

But, most "church plants" I know of are aimed at cities in the U.S. Cities where there are thousands-- or hundreds of thousands-- of believers. The church of Jesus has already been planted in those places. Now, it may need watering, or pruning, or to have the caterpillars picked off it, but it's there. So what is it exactly that we are "planting"? Are we simply trying to scratch-start another religion club to compete for believers with the existing local religion clubs? Are our "planters" happy to gather disaffected believers out of other clubs, in order to build a new one in OUR image? (Tell me that a "planter" who gathered 500 people a Sunday in this manner would not be considered a success!) In this, it seems to me that we are more like start-up businesses, eager to chisel out a hunk of Christian market share.

It strikes me as not a little arrogant on our part to gather up a team to "church-plant" in, say, Chicago. If we have a heart for sharing Jesus with Chicagoans, why don't we just go do it? It is certainly not necessary for us to start up yet another storefront competitor. Why can we not find joints in the Body in Chicago? Is it because no one else has the gospel like we have it? Or is it that we might not be able to do things our own way if we connected to believers already in place?

I fear that one of the motivations found most commonly among American "planters" is the hope of a full-time paying gig in "the ministry". Our local group has no job openings, so I go out on my own to open a new franchise. And once I have gathered a critical mass of believers, I hope that they will begin to pay me a wage that will allow me to quit my job at Best Buy and "enter the full-time ministry".

Somehow, this motivation seems questionable.

Perhaps a Gideonesque recruitment of church planting teams would be in order:
~Hoping for a future staff job? You guys can go home.
~Hoping to create a new group of which you will be a leader? That group, go home.
~Hoping to build a group that does things (doctrine, worship, activities) the way you like them? Thanks for coming, now go home.

Now, everybody that's left, grab a torch, a trumpet, and a pot and head toward the battle. And be prepared to succeed, only as a participant in what God is already doing in that place where you are headed.

The Great Child Robbery

2009-07-29T16:42:00.000-07:00

There have been many things said about the "cost of divorce". But in my reading, there is a calculation I have not come across. I'm not talking about the staggering emotional cost or the relational costs or the indirect costs. For this example, I'm talking about hard cash outlay, every month by the divorced parents of children. Let's look at just one expenditure:

I'm sure this has been calculated before, but it just occurred to me to run the numbers. After Jack and Jill divorced, they maintained separate households to care for themselves and their children. Compared to being married, Jack and Jill's combined housing expenses --rent, utilities, maintenance-- have almost doubled, but the same people are being housed, and no better than they were before. A very conservative estimate is that as parents, J&J are incurring "excess" housing costs of at least $1000 a month. (Your mileage may vary, but I can't imagine it would be less.) And while this pinches the pocketbook each month, the real news is in the savings calculator.

If that same $1000 per month were to have been socked away for the children, in a mutual fund at 8%, the accumulated value after 20 years would be over half a million dollars. That's real money. Carry that calculation out another 10 years. (Makes sense to think of it this way, as they will continue to maintain separate homes.) Now, the balance is $1.5 million. That is a very nice inheritance for the children.

Which Jack and Jill threw away.

I didn't know it was possible for ordinary human beings to squander that much money while living what we Americans would consider a modest normal lifestyle.

How many of us who found ourselves before a judge in divorce court, would have been able to openly say, "Yes, your honor, I know that this decision will cost my children over a million dollars in inheritance. It's worth every penny. Let's do it."

Perhaps we would have. Or just maybe, we might have done something differently...

Life vs Theology

2009-07-27T10:10:00.000-07:00

Third-hand revelation is as good as any. Baxter Kruger quotes Ken Blue as saying, “Thank God, most people live better than their theology.”

Boy, am I grateful for the reality of this statement.

I grew up in a group whose theology evidenced little grace, but my experience with the individuals involved was replete with grace and mercy. I have been with brothers who doctrinally frowned on demonstrative public praise in their congregations, but I have heard those same men unashamedly praise God for a sudden thundershower on dry crops, or for a cool breeze on a scorching workday.

I have heard prophetic words from those who doctrinally disdain modern prophecy, have seen active apostles working in denominations that do no recognize the office, and have heard many testimonies of divine miracles from folks whose theology denies such things. So, I must not be quick to put too much weight on "what your church believes" and be more aware of what God is doing in you.

Marbles and Grapes

2009-07-23T11:01:00.000-07:00

“To what shall I liken this generation?” Today’s state of Christian fellowship is very much like a large room filled with thousands of sacks of marbles. The marbles are all similar, with some differences in color and decoration, and they are divided up among a vast variety of different marble sacks. The smallest sacks contain only a couple dozen marbles, a few enormous sacks hold thousands, and there are sacks of every other size as well. There are simple cotton sacks, somber black sacks, sequined sacks, sacks of every fabric and design. Some are brand-new; others are obviously antiques. Some sacks are tattered and patched; some are even sewn shut at the top. Some of the large sacks are stunningly decorated, with no expense spared-- like Faberge eggs of the marble-sack world.

The marbles in each sack are identified by the sack in which they sit. Marbles in one sack are essentially closed off from marbles in the other sacks. When you look for the marbles, you see the sacks. And while the marbles in a sack rub up against each other all the time, they aren’t really connected to one another in any way. The only thing that actually holds them together is the sack. I am keenly aware that if a sack were to burst, all its marbles would fall out and scatter, to be scooped up as prizes by the owners of the other sacks.

Consider, by contrast, a bunch of grapes. Lovely terminology, “a bunch”-- not a dozen or a hundred or a carton or a case, but a “bunch”. As vague a description as one could create of the shape, size and appearance of that conglomeration of individual fruits. How many grapes are in a bunch? Where do they stand in relation to each other? That is totally dependent on what kind of connective network the vine produces for that bunch. Grapes are held together internally, by the connections of the vine. Life flows through those connections. How does one “identify” grapes? By the vine on which they grow.

Marbles (and many Christians) are held together by external organizations owned and operated by men. If you are a marble, you “join” a sack, and the sacks compete for your presence. If you are a grape, you find the Vine-connections that God has created for you in Jesus, and His life flows to you and others because you are connected.

The owner of a marble sack always wants more marbles and a bigger sack. The vinedresser only wants better grapes.

Are you living like a grape or a marble? Look closely at your connections with fellow-believers. Did you comparison-shop and choose your present church because it attracted or suited you? If your group’s Sunday services and programs disappeared tomorrow, would you go looking for another group? That’s marble behavior. When someone asks you about your spiritual identity, do you say, “I belong to First Baptist”, rather than “I belong to Jesus”? Very marble-ish. Does your group require some form of “church membership” for a person to function fully there? Does it ask your agreement to a “statement of faith” or some such set of doctrines? Would your affiliation be in question if you always went to Sunday morning meetings with another group? All these are characteristic of a religious “marble sack”.

You are called to be a grape, so why live like a marble? There is a better life available in the Vine.

Exceptions to the Rule

2009-07-23T10:43:00.000-07:00

Here are two facts that become interesting if taken together: According to polls, fewer than a third of Americans think Congress is doing a good job. At the same time, over the past twenty years, incumbents have been re-elected to Congress at a rate of near 90%. We seem to be saying that Congress overall is performing abysmally, but our local congressmen and senators are doing a marvelous job! Something doesn't make sense here.

I hear a similar dynamic voiced when I discuss the church with believers. When we talk about division, or a lack of impact in the community, or the millions spent of brick and mortar compared to nickels spent on the poor, I find a lot of Christians sadly acknowledging the reality of these things in the church as a whole. But this acknowledgment is usually followed by a quick defense of that Christian's local fellowship. "But our church gives 10% to missions," or "We started a clothes closet for the poor," or "Our Sunday School gave $500 to the United Way!" or "We had a pastor from another denomination speak at our midweek service last week!"

Funny how every local fellowship I hear about seems to be going one way while the church's performance in general is going another. We are not divisive, but the body of Christ is divided into hundreds of groups who hardly speak to one another. We are generous to the poor, but the real estate portfolio of the American church continues to increase while the homeless sleep on the church steps. We are committed to spreading the gospel to the world, but the overall resources churches spend on extralocal missions is dwarfed by the mortgage payments on our buildings.

But that's everybody else…. not us. "Our church" is the exception to the rule. In fact, all of us seem to be exceptions. Like the children in Lake Wobegon, who are "all above average".

Potential repeating feature--

2009-07-12T12:26:00.000-07:00

How about "Let's" and "Let's Not" for a feature? That is, one thing the local body should be encouraged to do, and one thing I'll encourage us NOT to do? Today's episode, "Let's"- Part One:

LET'S... invite our brother or sister home for dinner. (Not lunch, but dinner.) I know this doesn't sound very spiritual, but here we can do several good things.

Get to know more about each other than just where we work and how many kids we have. Eating together puts us more at ease than even the best "meeting".
Share our real selves, rather than just the sanitized version of us that we bring to church.
Enjoy a relaxed atmosphere where we can talk without being obligated to "study". Amazing how deep and wide we can go when we are free from religious meeting agendas.
Discover our joints. That is, recognize those people to whom God is connecting us. Hard to find these without some close interaction.

LET'S NOT... count church attendance anymore. Headcounts aren't of any use for pastoral care, nor are they beneficial to the people being counted. They just feed our human sense of pride, and too often give a false picture of what we are about. For biblical insight into head-counting, read 2 Samuel 24.

Keeping Score

2009-07-11T19:12:00.000-07:00

A friend and I were talking about some youth groups from his church which have been working in Uganda this summer. (Including a couple of my daughters!) He said that they seemed to be getting good results, and then seemed to pull up short. I understand his hesitation. In my experience, we tend to measure our effectiveness in evangelism and other work by the numbers, such as, "We had fifty decisions for Christ."

Our assumption that this information is important may not be wise. Experienced evangelists who spend years in the Third World tell me that often such a "decision" at a meeting may be little more than courtesy to a visitor. Most certainly, thinking that we have created X number of Christians in a crusade or a mission tour is probably more wishful thinking than reality. This is not to say that people are not being saved in these works, or that lives are not being changed. I am quite certain that God is showing up in the work these folks are doing. There is so much undeniable evidence of the power of God and changed lives! I am NOT in any way criticizing the work. It is not the work that needs to change, so much as the scorekeeping.

If God has called a group of young Texans to Uganda for two weeks, that is sufficient reason for the trip. God is faithful to lead them in what He calls them to do. Their task is not to be able to report a particular number of harvested souls. Theirs is to follow and participate in what the Father is doing. Reporting such things by numbers is an unfortunate human measurement that is at worst self-glorifying, and at best completely beside the point of the exercise. What if a mission group washed pots and mended clothes for an unknown orphanage for two weeks, leaving behind only the aroma of the Servant King? What if a street encounter is not a rejection, but a sowing of seed for a later harvest? What if the only real result of a meeting was that one believer who was about to give up was rejuvenated, but told no one about it? Those things don't show up in the statistics. But they are just as much the work of God as baptisms or decisions or buildings erected.

I relish those who come back from experiences like these brief mission trips with testimonies like, "I saw God move!" "I saw a blind man healed!" "I told a lady about Jesus!" Or best of all, "I got to do exactly what God was telling me to do!"

This is SO much better than counting heads. Such a worldly practice does not validate the work of pure-hearted servants, it demeans it. We serve for the joy, and let God keep the score.

Pass the word...

2009-06-27T10:51:00.000-07:00

I'm not much of a self-promoter, but you might read things here that you think someone else ought to see. Please let folks know where you read it. Your comments are always more than welcome-- even if you want to take me to task on something. To follow this blog (and only God knows where it's going next), you can click the little "Follow Blog" thingy on the top header.

The Religion Club and the Public School

2009-06-27T10:22:00.000-07:00

The average local religion club operates much like a public school. Like the public school, it approaches life from two specific aspects: academic and social.

The major gatherings of most clubs revolve around teaching. We devise various natural schemes to make our academic offerings more effective. First, we hire the best scholar/presenter we can get to handle our public lectures. These lectures are oriented around instructing adults. Because this is of limited effectiveness with younger people, we then move to demographically segregate them into age-specific subgroups, much as a school is divided into grades. Infants and toddlers are warehoused and entertained by paid baby-sitters to free their families from the burden of their care during classes. All the eight-year-olds are lumped together and presented with age-appropriate instructional material. In teaching adolescents, the main theme is to keep them liking the religion club and liking God, so we present them with as adolescent an atmosphere as possible. The post-high-school single people are grouped together – and kept separate from the married people, if the numbers allow. This is primarily for social and mate-hunting purposes.

But while this method does provide the most efficient, rational means of effectively getting academic information into the heads of people, those who grow up in the club spend their formative years with others just like themselves. Everyone in little Johnny’s class is just like Johnny: same age, same experiences, same coursework, same teacher. Everyone in teenager Susan’s group is just like her: same interests, same questions, same adolescent pride and self-doubt. This system works all the way up to the Senior Saints Class, where everyone shares similar historical points of reference, similar age-related issues, similar interests, prejudices, and fears.

Like the public school, the local religion club also works hard to provide social connections for its members. But since membership and attendance are voluntary, far more effort is made to “give the people what they want” in terms of social activities, in order to attract and retain members. Activities are generally selected on the basis of, “If we do this, more people will want to come.”
Our social activities also revolve around demographic divisions. We have youth activities, men’s meetings, women’s retreats, and children’s camps. Club activities that involve the entire family are seldom a priority.

But the body of Christ is really not built like this at all. It is like a family. God does not bring people into the kingdom in chronological order. He brings in young and old and puts them in the same extended family. We liberally use the term “family” when we describe our local churches, but what would we look like if we really operated as a family?

More to come...

You Might Be A Prophet

2009-06-27T10:04:00.000-07:00

You might be a prophet…

If someone asks you what part of the body of Christ you are and you say “the teeth”…

If you have ever spoken to a person and had them spontaneously catch fire…

If your idea of gentleness is picking someone up after you knocked him down…

If you push the button at Sonic and say, “I see a great cheeseburger descending upon the clouds of onion rings, no pickle, easy on the mayo…”

If you have a “Son of Thunder” tattoo…

If you think people who need their grasshoppers cooked first are sissies…

If you like to stand by the door when you speak, since you’ll be the first one leaving anyway…

If you’ve ever wished there were still a couple of prophets of Baal around so you could take out your frustrations on them…

If you’ve ever gotten a sermon from looking into the Jello salad at Furr’s Cafeteria…

If lots of churches invite you to speak —once.

If your vacation postcards say, “Thus saith the Lord: Having a great time, wish you were here…”

If you say, “We are in the last days” and people think you mean your sermon is about over…

If you know the date of the Second Coming, but can’t remember your wedding anniversary…

If you find yourself looking through the Yellow Pages for someone who can do alterations on a hair shirt…

If more than forty percent of your sermons begin with the phrase, “You’re not going to like this, but…”

If you’d like to call fire down from heaven, just once…

If you have ever asked the Lord, “You’re not going to make me SAY that, are You?”…

If you’ve ever used the term “you brood of vipers” in a teaching and wondered why the offering was so small…

Under My Grapevine

2009-06-25T17:36:00.001-07:00

Read John 15:1-11, “The Vine and the Branches”

Jesus’ analogy speaks to me as I sit here under the grapevine that grows behind my house. It is a large specimen, covering about 200 square feet of arbor. We don’t really do much with this grapevine, and left to itself, it grows bigger and denser every year. When we do water it, it sends out more and more shoots, with more and more big leaves. As a shade, it’s a marvelous thing. Want to come over and hang around the back yard on a mild summer’s evening? You’ll not find a more pleasant place. A couple dozen people can find comfortable seating in the shade of my grapevine. I could seat more if I just wanted to spend the money to expand the arbor.

My grapevine is a relatively neat and orderly plant. Oh, a couple of branches hang too low occasionally, making it inconvenient to walk under, but stripping off just a few leaves puts it to rights. And it doesn’t inconvenience us with a mess of grapes. You know what a pain those grapes can be. The birds would flock around nibbling at them, leaving you-know-what all over my clean patio. Grapes would be ripening and falling off all the time, getting squashed by every kid that runs through the back yard. But not with my grapevine. Sure, my grapevine puts on several bunches of grapes every spring, but they’re hard little green things about the size of pencil erasers. You could never eat them… I mean, even the birds don’t bother them much. There aren’t very many grapes even at that, and they dry up by the fall and are no trouble to anybody.

We thought about trying to grow some grapes. The previous homeowner told us that this grapevine would make lovely grapes with some care and serious pruning. But that would really cut back on the shade we like so well, and would put kind of a dent in our outdoor entertaining. And with all the mess and bother… well, we don’t really like grapes all that well, anyway.

I hear that folks who grow grapes for a living cut back their vines every year. Saw it on the Discovery Channel once. Those pruned-back vines sure looked naked on their trellises. Kind of ugly, if you ask me. (I mean, compared to the big beautiful specimen in my back yard.) Not a bit of shade anywhere in their whole vineyard. Even at harvest time, nothing but a mass of stubby vines with big bunches of grapes hanging on them. Then, the growers fill that vineyard with a bunch of unsavory-looking migrants picking grapes for somebody else to use. I guess if that’s your idea of a good time, more power to you. But I think I could show those Napa Valley boys a thing or two about growing grapevines, if they could just get their mind off those silly grapes for a few minutes…

(Let me get my tongue out of my cheek for a minute, now.)

The church of Jesus Christ has borne much fruit over the centuries. But the grapevine that is today’s American church has become more a shade for the saints than an actual project to grow grapes. Sure, we talk grapes. But most of the enormous, greatly admired churches and ministries we know are renowned for their leaves, for their mighty arbors, and for the thousands who find rest in their shade. If you doubt this for an instant, ask one of those institutions for a ten-year financial statement. If they’ll reveal it, you’ll find far more money spent on arbor building and maintenance than in grape-growing.

This has gone on for so long that, like the grapevine in my back yard, our entire understanding of the vine has become distorted. We want the shade, and gladly sacrifice the fruit. No grapevine will provide both. An unpruned vine produces more and more leaves. That mass of leaves consumes all the resources, causing the grapes to starve. But the Vinedresser is coming, his pruning hook in hand. And He will have His harvest.

My advice is to volunteer for the pruning, and know that it will likely be severe. Let the Father cut loose that which has become shade, so that what remains will bear fruit. Be prepared to lay down what is popular and admired by men, so that the only success that remains is the fruit the Vinedresser seeks. Know full well that before harvest time comes, every unfruitful branch will find its way into the fire by the Father’s hand. Entire collections of beautiful leafy limbs will be cut off, with no further life flowing from the Vine.

Are you ready to be an ugly, stubby, sawed-off branch? A few bare canes on the true Vine? If you are, then know that the only identity you have left will be in that Vine, and in His ability to bear fruit in your life. There may well be nothing left of you to admire… except those gorgeous grapes the Father so desires.

Jesus said he told us these things that His joy might remain in us and that our joy may be full. There must be something to this grape business after all…

A few more notes about grapevines and the kingdom of God:

Vinedressers cut back a producing grapevine to only four branches or “canes” every year. The reason is simple: grapes only bear on new growth. The branches that are pruned off this year are the ones that produced fruit last year. If the pruning is not done thoroughly, then the vine must share its support between new, fruit-bearing branches and last year’s branches, which are only producing leaves. This is the reason that when the vinedresser is finished, all that is left is the vine and the bare branches.

This is analogous to our experience in the church. We do things that bear fruit in their season, so we cannot imagine that God would prune back what we have built. After all, it has been successful! But just like the branch of the grapevine, after that bearing season, what we produce is mainly window-dressing. We recount the glory days of our fruit-bearing, and we use that recounting to justify our unwillingness to change. But just as with the grapevine, there is a season for that branch to bear, and a season for that branch to be pruned back. Left on our own, unpruned, we will inevitably descend from fruitfulness to leafy natural size and beauty. We will become more attractive and less fruitful.

Leaves help the fruit grow, and then they kill it. In the bearing season, the vine puts on leaves that help produce the nutrients needed to grow grapes. They actually support the production of grapes. But left on the vine after the season passes, they begin to compete with the fledgling grape clusters for water and nutrients. Soon, each successive new crop of grapes struggles to get started against the large, established leafy structure. But the crop stands very little chance of maturing.

Once again, the parallel is easily seen. We build Christian organizations and structures that initially do help in bearing the fruit of the kingdom. But when we let them grow unchallenged, these organizations quickly cease to support that fruit-bearing and begin to develop a life of their own. They then begin to compete for the believers’ time and money to build buildings and pay operational expenses. Soon, the believers are being asked straight-faced from the pulpits to “support the church”, when that structure should be supporting them.

The fruit that does manage to appear in these situations has a hard time maturing. We make new converts into good “church members”, but not into strong believers. We take them straight from the baptistery into “church work”, fitting them into roles that have them supporting the organization. Instead of being the reason the organization exists, the believer becomes just another resource to keep the organization alive.

What does it mean to be “cut off and thrown into the fire”? If we continue to resist the pruning hook of the Father, the day comes when we are no longer “abiding in the Vine”. We become self-sufficient, a vine unto ourselves, with our own network of lovely branches that are off limits to the Vinedresser. In that day, we cease to have our life in the vine. The lordship of Christ no longer exists in what we have built. The Father cuts off such things. They may continue to exist in the natural, but the Father no longer supplies them, nor will He reward what they produce. As with all man’s works, such things will burn in the end.

Supermarket Relationships

2009-06-25T17:31:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are part of the migration of believers out of the institutional church, you are likely seeing a tremendous shift in the operation of your personal relationships. Friends who were at your side every Sunday drop off your scope. What you thought were strong long-term relationships seem to evaporate. The Spirit gave me a picture recently of what is happening to us.

I was reminded of shopping for vegetables in the supermarket. There, I simply rolled my cart down the aisle and selected whatever cans suited my taste. They were all labeled and displayed for my convenience. I did not concern myself with where the food came from, who grew it, who picked it, or what chemicals and processes were involved. It was easy for me to get food in this way, as I did not have to do much except bring my checkbook. Others in the background assembled the cans on the shelves, kept the lights on, and kept store hours that fit my schedule.

The only problem was the quality of the food in the cans. The nutritional value was almost nil. I sometimes found a can which declared that it had been “fortified” with vitamins, but that only underscored the reality of the empty calories to which I had grown accustomed. I could not judge this by the cans, however. I could only look at the labels and make my selections based on the external appearance.

When asked where I got my groceries, I would say things like, “I go to Albertson’s”, or “ I normally go to Kroger, but I go to Safeway when they have specials.” Nobody asked me what I bought, because the products are essentially similar no matter where you go. I just used the store I liked best, or the most convenient place to pick up what I needed.

Thus it has been with our church relationships. We regularly go to a building built for our shopping pleasure. Organizations build and remodel and design their operations to get me to shop with them. Everyone in the neighborhood tries out the new outfit with the fancy brickwork and the espresso bar and the attractive circular in the newspaper. These organizations pique our interest with massive advertising, and spend much of their effort trying to woo customers who normally frequent other establishments. The goal is simple: to bring in as many consumers and as much revenue as possible.

It is so convenient for us. We drop off our children at their managed department, getting a receipt so we can pick them up later. We cruise that building, picking out people we want to connect with, generally based on our personal preferences and outward appearances. We get with the “youth group” or the “ladies group” or the “people-too-old-to-be-in-college-but-not-yet-married-with-children group”. We sign up to rub elbows with folks who have things in common with us: the “Single Again” folks, or the weekly “Lose Weight for Jesus” support group.

We have become a nation of religious consumers. And as such, we are prey to every marketing ploy, every free offer, and every bait-and-switch tactic known to those who are selling what we buy. But it is only the darkness of our own hearts that makes such schemes effective. After all, we have proven that we are eager for the convenience of one-stop God-shopping, easily conditioned to the weekly shopping trip, satisfied with the quality of what we are sold. To criticize those who give us what we want is to ignore the beam in our own eye.

But what of those who have become disenchanted and have abandoned the spiritual supermarket? While I applaud their action, my experience tells me that they often begin to get hungry. And the reasons are not hard to see.

First, one cannot eat the fact that he no longer has religious canned goods in his pantry. Even if those canned goods had limited nutrition, simple abstention does not replace those nutrients. We must cultivate our own garden. We must find those individuals with whom God would joint us, and we must nurture and develop those relationships ourselves, without the artificial stimulus of required group meetings. We cannot leave the supermarket and expect to find canned goods along the side of the road to sustain us.

The first hard reality of this new, organic Christian lifestyle is that it requires work. Instead of dropping the can in the cart, we find ourselves on the end of a hoe in the summer sun, weeding and cultivating our relationships. This does not fit into our “busy schedules”, and it cannot be left to others when the weather gets too hot. In point of fact, any gardener can tell you that before the harvest, comes the hard work. Many believers simply do not want to do this. It is a discipline they have not yet learned. The time and effort required is so much more than the hour-and-a-half-every-Sunday to which they are accustomed. As they look over their patch of struggling green beans, the enemy whispers, “Those are three cans for a dollar at the supermarket. What are you doing?” There is a powerful temptation to trade in the hoe for that familiar shopping cart.

Unfortunately, some believers who refuse to go back to the supermarket will also not accept the responsibility to cultivate their personal gardens. These become worse off than they were before, returning to consumerism (this time through books, tapes, and television) but getting even less nutrition than before. They become emaciated, having a few scattered conferences and seminars to talk about, but lacking that strong net of local personal joints through which the life of the Spirit primarily flows.

Sometimes, we trade the religious supermarket for the corner store. That is, we move from the religious institution into homes or offices, but never relinquish our consumerism. We are still consumers, but we now get our sermons delivered from a living room sofa. We still operate scheduled store hours, only they are on a weeknight instead of Sunday. We still want our “cell pastor” or “home group leader” to fill our shopping cart, generally at a discount in required time and money. We replace the ordinances of the supermarket with our own localized practices. We become “bigger fish in a smaller pond”, gaining more control over what goods the store offers us. This is “getting out of the box”, only to climb into a smaller box.

We are called to the backyard garden of personal relationships in Christ. God gives the grace to build these relationships, and provides the people for that purpose. As we learn to do this, we will focus more on meeting than meetings. More on service than services. Less on scheduled events and more on Christ-life itself. If you are standing in the hot sun in your garden, do not be weary in well-doing. You will have a harvest if you don’t get tired and quit. Keep watering and weeding.

There is a world of difference between corn-on-the-cob fresh from the garden and those aluminum cans with the green giant on the label. Anyone who has tasted the difference can tell you it is well worth the trouble to grow your own. Happy gardening!

A Selfish Gratitude

2009-06-10T16:13:00.000-07:00

We have all taken the "We should be more grateful" guilt trip. Unfortunately, too many of my well-intentioned brothers make this a sermon staple. I think it started when we wouldn't eat the beets Mom cooked when we were six years old. Remember when she reminded us about the starving children in (insert deprived nation/continent here) who went to bed hungry? It didn't make us grateful for beets-- just made us wonder why we couldn't ship them to the hungry kids Mom knew and make a win/win out of the deal.

So we grew up having our blessings pointed out to us as an illustration of our own malformed character. Didn't help much. For the record, I have yet to meet the person who developed a lifestyle of thankfulness because he felt so badly about his previous ingratitude.

What if we came to realize that thankfulness is actually good for us? (Like most things God wants us to have.) Not good for us in the "You better eat your asparagus" sense, but in the "Now, that's what I'm talkin' about!" sense. Consider, if you will, that thankfulness is like a developed sense, like smell, for example. If you are insensitive to aromas, nothing stinks. But nothing smells good, either. You never get to know the difference between sweaty socks and homemade sugar cookies. Ingratitude is like that. Gratitude, on the other hand, is like the capacity to wake up in the morning and smell rain, or brewing coffee, or the pine tree outside the window. It is to experience with greater depth and clarity what is good around us.

And gratitude can be cultivated.

It's simple, really. We are often prompted by the Holy Spirit to be thankful. Take each opportunity to say, "Thanks!" Even if you forgot to do so when it happened. Don't feel guilty about the timing, just express your gratitude when you remember. The more this happens, well, the more it happens. The more you sniff, the more you smell. The more you offer your thanks-- to God or to anyone else-- the more aware you are of the gifts given to you. The more aware you are of your blessings, the more you enjoy them. The more you enjoy them, the better your overall appraisal of life in your world.

You know those people who seem to always be able to see the good in the world around them? Those pollyannish, unrealistic people whose apparent happiness is so annoying? The ones you secretly envy? They are most often those favored few who have learned to express their thanksgiving as part of their living and breathing, and in so doing touch the beauty of life with great depth and vitality.

Gratitude. Do it for you.

All In The Family, Kinda Sorta...

2009-06-07T16:36:00.000-07:00

I have eleven children. Yes, eleven. Get the gasp out of your system; while I am bragging just a little, I'm really trying to set up an illustration, an analogy, yea, a parable...

I have two sons and nine daughters. The boys have some things in common that they don't have in common with my girls. Guy stuff, you know. So, they have recently decided that they are "a family". If you ask Son #1 who's in his family, he points out Son #2. And vice versa. Now, if pressed by a teacher at school, they would readily admit that indeed, they do indeed have nine sisters, but that the "Sons of McLean" are the group they really identify with.

I have two daughters at Enormous State University. They have decided to form a family, the "McLean Fellowship at ESU", based on their commonalities. Same deal as the boys, they mostly associate with each other except at Christmas, and otherwise only identify only with one another.

The five children who are in public school have taken the hint and just formed their own "Youth of McLean" group, which they now identify as their "family". They don't hang with their older siblings much anymore. All the neat activities going on with their new group just don't leave them with time...

How do you think the formation of these three "families" makes Dad feel? And how many families does Dad think he has?

Religion clubs: a rose by any other name?

2009-05-31T16:53:00.000-07:00

From the Ongoing Debate Department:
Why do you call local churches “religion clubs”? Are you just trying to be insulting?

Well, insult is not the intent, but I fully expect to be heard this way. After all, if you take what is considered a holy thing and decline to recognize it in that way, and you can expect to catch a few stones in the small of the back. Occupational hazard...

I use the term religion club in the interest of rhetorical accuracy. After all, what is a “club”? A group of folks who associate with one another based on a common interest. Nothing wrong there. If the common interest is Christianity, then we have a Christian club. In practical terms, our local clubs can usually be identified in more detail than this. Joe belongs to a local religion club whose main interest is studying the Bible and trying to understand it and follow what they gather from it. Jane’s club is more oriented toward feeding the poor and evangelism. Nice people getting together to do nice things.

So why is my terminology offensive? Because we insist on seeing our local club as a holy thing, as The Body of Christ. But in most cases, it is no more “a church” than a hindquarter is a heifer. The believers are indeed part and parcel of the church, but that organization which they claim, that non-profit corporation, is not.

Jesus has one bride, one church. Granted, the Church appears in many, many places. Paul wrote letters to the church in Philippi, to the church in Corinth, to the church in Ephesus. But it strikes me that he never writes to the plural “churches in Corinth”, or the “churches in Ephesus”. He writes to a single entity in each city. The idea of plural “churches” in a city-- discrete from one another, separate in almost every tangible sense, governed and operated as though the majority of the other believers in the city do not even exist—is an idea foreign to Paul’s writings.

Well, I say “foreign”, but perhaps it is not entirely so. I do find a hint of our tradition of schism in I Corinthians 3:
“You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? For when one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not mere men?”

Replace the characters with Luther or Wesley or Calvin or Moody and we find ourselves readily cut-and-pasted into Paul’s discourse, with largely negative consequences. Mere men make organizations of more mere men. The local organizations I find in the burgeoning Yellow Pages listings between “chiropractors” and “cigar stores” are, if I may boldly steal from Lincoln, “…of the people, by the people and for the people”.

The church of Jesus Christ in any city is far greater than the organization who meets at a particular address on a particular day. The local religion clubs are something far less. The everyday members of these groups speak with a prophetic pronoun when they refer to that organization to which they belong as “our church”.

Or in my terminology, “our club”. I don't object at all to such clubs, but it does seem important to me to be able to recognize what they are if we are ever to be able to see the actual church of Jesus Christ in the cities where we live.

Reality 1, 2, 3

2009-05-28T17:48:00.000-07:00

Before I can walk in really healthy relationships with those I love, I must be settled in my primary relationship: the relationship with my heavenly Father. To do this, I must accept and believe three immutable Realities.

Reality Number One
As a child of God, I am secure and accepted in his love and by his adoption. I am loved and received not because of my actions, but in spite of them. Nothing can change how the Father feels about me as his child. Nothing I can do can challenge or breach this relationship, because God created it through Christ Jesus. When I sin, does that change his perspective on me? Absolutely not, because the blood of Jesus does not change and the character of the Father does change. My place in the heart of the Father came from the work of Jesus and his work alone. I must accept by faith my place in the Father.

Reality Number Two
What my life looks like now is going to change. The Father intends to conform me to the likeness of Jesus. This means discipline, chastisement, and a standard that I can only reach by the regenerative power of the Holy Spirit in my life. Just as the Father’s love is immutable, so is his holiness. He will make me into something I am not now. This pressure will never stop. The Father will never wash his hands of his sons and say, “Enough! I’m tired of fooling with you!” Nor while we are in this body will we ever hear, “It is finished!” What I am at this time will come under constant challenge from the Holy Spirit. The flesh hates the hand of the Spirit and it always will. This conflict is part of setting aside the corruptible and taking on the incorruptible. I must accept by faith that the Father’s correction is not his rejection.

Reality Number Three
No matter how severe the discipline or struggle I experience in Reality Number Two, it will never in the tiniest degree change Reality Number One. Reality Number Three is my place of rejoicing! No matter what can of worms the Father opens in my life, he loves me not one bit less. He does not recoil from me in my sin, even while he confronts it. He embraces me in my filth and washes me clean at the same time. This is the paradox of love that I must accept by faith.

All three of the Realities are received by faith. We must choose to believe. Nothing in the natural realm can cement such things in our hearts. But when we do believe, nothing in the natural realm can take these Realities from us.

Found God, added cream, no sugar

2009-05-27T11:00:00.000-07:00

Stopped at my local Starbucks today for my usual cup-in-lieu-of-lunch and couldn’t buy one. The barista set my cup on the counter and said, “Your money’s no good today. I like to buy a cup for a regular every day, and it’s getting close to the end of my shift. This one’s on me.” Nice.

Some bullet points from this experience:

Doing good need not be a well-considered action. “Just do it” is better than “think about how best to do it until the moment passes”. Wasn’t Peter healing the lame man sort of a random act?

Kindness is real when it’s out of your own pocket. This young man didn’t offer me the hospitality of his store, but bought me a cup out of his own pocket. Next time someone comes to you in need, think about this before referring him to the Benevolence Committee. (Somebody, remind me to tell you the mule story another time.)

Don’t forget the heart of your Father, who is following you around looking to bless you. If you want to enjoy your life more, let things like this cup of coffee speak to you loudly. This sharpens your senses to the other times God does such things and you just haven’t noticed.

The heart of God is revealed in many places. Don’t just look for Him at “The Store That Displays The Fish”.

2009-05-27T10:39:00.000-07:00

If Jesus was from Palestine, Texas

See if you can identify the passages referenced below:

~ “Listen, Martha, the chicken salad sandwiches were great. But you oughta spend less time stuffin’ that celery with Cheez Whiz and more time listening.”

~ “Lemme get this straight. You boys saw some fella you don’t know casting out demons, and you told him to knock it off? Whose side are you on, anyway?”

~ “Quit worryin’ about how you’re gonna get along. I ain’t never seen a bluebonnet in a beauty shop, or a mockingbird fillin’ out a credit application.”

~ “Only a knothead would turn on the flashlight and stick it back in his pocket. Hold it up here high so we can see somethin’.”

~ “You just can’t do much good trying to teach people who used to change your diapers. They never let you forget it.”

~ “The kingdom of God is a little like plantin’ squash. Plant just a few seeds, and you’re givin’ away squash all summer.”

~ “This idea you’ve got about my castin’ out demons by the prince of demons is just plain silly. You reckon for the big finish, I’ll just grab myself by the scruff of the neck and throw myself out the window?”

~ “Buildin’ your house on soft ground because it’s easy diggin’ seems like a good idea until the first frog-strangler comes along.”

~ “Of course you badmouth the good things I’m doing. You people have had a bad taste in your mouth for so long, you couldn’t taste goodness if somebody hit you in the face with a pie.”

~ “I’d advise figurin’ out a way to scrape that forty years worth of ugly off your own face before you start in to nitpickin’ your wife’s eyeshadow.”

~ “Let’s get with it, boys. Forty acres of hay to get in and we’re burnin’ daylight. Come dark, you can stick a fork in us, ‘cause we’re done.”

~ “Trouble’s comin’, church bosses, you sorry rascals. You characters foreclose on a widow lady on Friday, then donate a piece of the action to your church on Sunday. By Monday, there’s a brass plaque on the church wall sayin’ how your generosity paid for the new stained glass window.”

~ “Sure enough, that’s Johnson grass in the cotton. But put down your hoes, boys, ginnin’ season’s comin’ soon enough.”

~ “It’s not what goes into you that causes a mess, it’s what comes out of you. Anyone who knows the difference between a picnic table and an outhouse knows that.”

~ “Don’t worry about what kind of fish are in the river. If we fish, we’ll get some catfish. If we catch any carp, we’ll throw ‘em back. Just get the trotlines in the water.”

~ “When my Father gets a call about one of his cows being out in the bar ditch, He doesn’t start off mending the fence. First thing He does is go after that cow. He’s just that way.”

~ “Trouble’s comin’, church bosses, you sorry rascals. It’s not enough that you turn up your nose at my cookin’… you try to run everybody else out of the kitchen as well. You’d rather folks go hungry than to let ‘em chow down on a meal you won’t eat.”

~ “Here’s something else that’s bad news. I hire a foreman to look after my ranch and my hired hands. But while I’m out of town, the sorry mongrel takes the hands’ payroll and buys beer and barbecue for himself and his lowlife buddies. But when I get ready to come back to the ranch, I don’t call ahead. Let me tell you, when I do get home, I’ll barbecue that foreman myself!”

~ “Don’t go around tellin’ folks your hope is in God when all your cash is in First National.”

~ “Better find out the whole cost of the house before you start building. Otherwise, after you’ve laid a good slab and beautiful brickwork, the neighbors will notice that there’s no roof and that it’s raining all over your furniture.”

On feeding the five thousand:
“You boys see if you can’t find these folks some supper.”
“Jesus, do see us hidin’ a caterer somewhere in our back pockets?”
“Well, what have you got?”
“Two hunks of catfish left over from last night’s fish fry… and five biscuits.”
“Y’all all sit down. Father, I thank you that tonight, it’s catfish and biscuits for everybody!”

“It’s a good thing to be merciful. Some day, you’re gonna need some slack yourself.”

“When you fast, wash your face, comb your hair, and hush about it. If you’re gonna make a big deal about missin’ meals, all you’ll get out of it is a growlin’ stomach.”

“Stand up for me, and I won’t forget it. Act like you’ve never heard of me, and I’ll remember that, too.”

“Folks are going to seek me and come to church folks for guidance. And some of these people are going to drag these innocents into sin. Let me tell you, when the day comes, these so-called leaders will wish they’d gone headfirst through a combine harvester rather than face me.”

“The trick to being first in God’s kingdom is to be constantly saying, ‘After you, brother.’”

“Trouble’s comin’, church bosses, you sorry rascals. You knock yourselves out to try and make people act just like you. And when do you find some poor sucker to buy into your nonsense, all he does is add your bad habits to his. He turns out to be even worse than you!”

“The best way to live your life with just enough to get by is to always give other folks just enough to keep ‘em satisfied.”

“My Father has a funny way of counting. He don’t so much count how much you give, but how much you keep for yourself.”

“Funny how everybody’s impressed when they find out you’re a doctor, but then they don’t understand why you hang out with sick people all the time.”

“Pick up the check for someone who can’t return the favor. Your Father will pay you back with a lot more than that cheeseburger and Dr. Pepper that you popped for.”

“It’s better to sit in the folding chair and let other folks have the front pews. Otherwise, the usher is liable to come and escort you back to the cheap seats while everybody looks on.”

Turning the Other Other Cheek

2009-05-25T18:43:00.000-07:00

You have heard it said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. --Matthew 5:38-39

Jesus is famous for turning common sense on its ear. Most Christians have been able to quote this famous teaching since Sunday school. But have you actually walked this one out? Many have made the attempt to turn the other cheek, only to come up short. It actually requires more of us than we might think.

First, this command concerns dealing with “an evil person”. It is not enough to turn the other cheek to a person who might deserve the benefit of the doubt, but to someone who is maliciously trying to hurt you. Second, it is not enough to simply refuse to retaliate. Jesus says not even to resist a person who would attack you in this manner. This means seeing the attack coming and deciding not to defend yourself. Third, Jesus calls us to stay engaged with the evil person and offer him a shot at the undamaged part of us, in short, to consciously continue in a decision to lay down the most basic of our “rights”—the right to protect ourselves from harm.

Recent experience tells me that the real test of obedience to this command comes only after my assailant has struck the second time. Up until this point, I can walk in that self-interested kind of faith that says, “If I obey God, everything will turn out all right for me.” But when my attacker takes the opportunity to strike the cheek I offer him, then I am faced with the fact that even though I obeyed God, I got hurt—again. Now what will I do? A self-centered faith says, “This is not working. I must not be ‘rightly dividing the word of truth’, or I would not now have two swollen jaws. God certainly would not want me to stand here and be beaten.” I will at the very least withdraw in my own defense, or I may even reason that I have given the evil person more than enough grace and feel free to retaliate.

But choosing to stay engaged and still not resist means moving out of selfish motivations and totally into submission to the lordship of Jesus. At this point, my response to my assailant has little to do with what is happening to me. It is no longer between me and the one who struck me, but it is a faith issue between my Lord and myself. No longer am I guided by my emotions, nor by my reason. For my emotions will tend toward hurt, anger, even bitterness. And human reason will not accept laying down my own life for someone who intends evil toward me.

But such behavior does look like Jesus. In fact, nothing more clearly reflects the message of the cross than the radical, outlandish behavior that Jesus calls us to in this simple teaching. As Paul writes, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” All the sermons in the world cannot preach this truth more clearly than turning that other cheek—again and again.

Parable of the Pizza

2009-05-23T09:20:00.000-07:00

Enrico Bodoni sat down in a pizza restaurant one day, an establishment operated by two of his sons. When the pizza entrepreneurs heard he was there, they prepared their best Pepperoni Special and sent it to their father’s table. But soon the word filtered back to the kitchen that Mr. Bodoni was not touching his pizza.

The Bodoni brothers were astounded and marched out to the table. “Papa, we noticed you’re not eating your pizza.”

“No, I suppose I’m not,” was the even reply.

“Bodoni Brothers’ pizza is the best pizza in town,” said the pizza men. “Everyone says so.”

“I’ve heard that around the neighborhood,” said their father.

“We put a lot of time and effort into that pizza.”

“I know.”

“The ingredients were really expensive.”

“So I see.”

The pizza chefs leaned in closer to the table. “Papa, you’re embarrassing us. You know, sitting here in front of all our other customers, and not touching your pizza.”

“Sorry.”

Finally, the brothers threw up their hands in exasperation. “So, why aren’t you eating your pizza?”

“I don’t like pizza. Never have.”

The brothers Bodoni were flabbergasted. “What do mean you don’t like pizza? Of course you like pizza! You come in here all the time! If you didn’t like pizza, why would you come to a pizza restaurant?”

The father replied kindly, “I don’t come in here because I like pizza. I come in here because I like you.”

Moral: Never mistake God’s presence for His purposes. As many discover the manifest presence of God in their lives, there is a human tendency to correlate God’s presence with some effort of their own. “We must be doing God’s will; just look at how he is blessing us!” This is sort of like the fellow who thought the wind picked up because he put up a windmill. God’s blessings are part of God’s love for His children. In this He never leaves us. But we can only walk in God’s kingdom purposes by the power and direction of the Holy Spirit. And His purposes are equally real in the “valley of the shadow of death” as they are “beside still waters”.

Life Savers

2009-05-23T09:17:00.000-07:00

"He who saves his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it."

What does it mean here to “save your life”? Does it just mean to avoid martyrdom, or is there something more here?

One who “saves his life” is like one who saves his money. He gathers it up in order to keep it for himself. If I keep my time, my resources, my passions for myself and my own satisfaction, I am saving my life. I am like the small boy who squirrels away the last of his cookies, and when asked to share it, refuses. “I’m saving it!” he says. Jesus says that when I finally reach into my pocket for that oh-so-carefully-saved cookie, I will find only a handful of crumbs.
In saving my life, I invest that which God has given me in myself. But investing in the natural man has a limited payoff. There can be no eternal return on that investment. It is somewhat like “investing” in a cord of firewood. The firewood is useful, and will keep me warm for a while. But when it’s gone, it’s gone. That money I spent has gone up the chimney in smoke, and I am cold again. Likewise, when we reserve the right to keep all or part of our lives for ourselves, we lose what we tried so hard to keep. We have become consumers of the gift of God, rather than stewards of his blessing.

Attribution

2009-05-23T09:08:00.000-07:00

In this blog, I do not promise originality. I would herewith warn my friends not to be surprised if they find themselves appearing unnamed in this space. After all, you are part of God's revelation to me! If you want editorial credit, just shout. Otherwise, I will adhere to the Preacher's Attribution Rule, which is:

1. The first time you share a thought in the pulpit you attribute it. "St. Thomas Aquinas once said..."
2. The second time you share the same thought, you generalize it. "A wise man once said..."
3. Third (and any subsequent) use belongs to you. "As I was praying, the Lord said to me..."

Book review

2009-05-23T08:46:00.000-07:00

We were discussing what the Bible really is. Or at least how people see it. Some see it as a legal document, full of laws, precedents and rulings to be studied so that we will know the basis upon which our lives will be judged. Some see it as a more friendly "instruction manual", where we get the manufacturer's instructions for operating a Christian, as well as troubleshooting information whenever the Christian malfunctions. Some see it as a book of clever stories with moral stories, profound aphorisms, pithy proverbs and a few basic God-principles. (Sort of a cross between Moses' tablets, Aesop's fables, and Poor Richard's Almanac.)

Me, I read it as a grand autobiography of the Divine Author. In it we are introduced to God by seeing how He relates to mankind. We can touch His character by seeing human characters with whom we can identify... or be inspired... or be horrified. Here-- as in other places-- God chooses to reveal Himself to us. But as an autobiography, the Bible is best understood as being both from God and about God... but that studying it is no substitute for actually knowing the Author personally.

Like all autobiographies, the book does not contain all there is to be said about the Author, it is in no way comprehensive, and as the Author still lives, much more could be written.

And indeed, IS being written.

Ice

2009-05-23T08:43:00.000-07:00

Had coffee yesterday with my daughter who is headed for a brief mission trip to Uganda. Ever show up to pray and wind up prophesying? Happens all the time around here. I liked the word from the Lord we heard: The word of the Lord comes to you like a piece of ice in your mouth. You can swallow it, or you can spit it out. But for heaven's sake, don't ever let it just sit there and melt away....

Reactivating

2009-05-20T16:46:00.001-07:00

Tried this blog once before and just couldn't get it going. Trying again, since there are only a couple billion blogs out there now. So there's obviously a need!

Here's to a successful re-boot.

What would we look like?

2009-05-20T16:05:00.000-07:00

I was just talking to a strong brother who had returned from visiting friends. These folks have come out of a number of church traditions to form--alas-- another "local church", complete with ruler/preacher and meeting house. This is simply because, as my friend put it, "it's what they know." And there's the rub. We tend to reproduce what we know, even if we intentionally leave what we know for good reason. It is hard, incredibly hard, to do something that is actually different.

Perhaps we have to step outside of our Christian skins to do this.

A question for the student: Let's say I am part of a large extended family. My mom has ten brothers and sisters, my dad has ten brothers and sisters, I have ten brothers and sisters... and we all live in the same town. How would you expect to see us expressing and maintaining our family relationships, passing on our family traditions, and so forth? What would you see us doing?

Would we show up at a cousin's kid's ball game and make fools of ourselves over a five-year-old hitting a ball off a tee? Would a dozen of us show up at cousin Luke's to celebrate his new swimming pool? Would most of the crowd descend on Mom on her birthday to her complete delight and the general dishevelment of her nice little house? Would the traditional Friday afternoon ritual be, "Can I sleep over at Matt's house?" Would I and four of my cousins corner my unemployed brother-in-law and quietly force some cash on him for his house payment? Would the granddaughter introduce the new boyfriend to Grandpa before going to the prom? Would we have the occasional family reunion, an exercise to play ourselves into exhaustion on what always turns out to be the hottest weekend of the summer? (Who schedules these things?) Would you find my ten-year-old son on our back patio learning the intracacies of dominoes from his grandfather and great-uncles? Would there be eternal arguments over who does the turkey for Thanksgiving this year; last year's was dry, I'm sorry to tell you. Would we crowd the hospital waiting room when Dad had his operation... or when little Julie was born? Would the first grandchild to get his college degree be cheered by a large group in the cheap seats, despite the admonition to "please hold your applause until the end"? Would every kid begin every school year hearing from his new teacher, "Oh, yes. I know your sister/brother/cousin. You're going to do fine. I know what your mother expects from you."

OR...

What if I told you that every Saturday night, Grandpa selects a movie at the local theater and our entire clan goes to that movie? Seven o'clock showing. We meet in the theater lobby, pay for our tickets, the kids run around a bit, then we troop in to see the show. For 90 minutes or thereabouts, we laugh together, or cry together, or sit on the edge of our seats, depending on the content of tonight's feature. Then the lights come up and we all troop out to the parking lot, pass a little small talk about the movie on the way to the car and say, "See you next Saturday!" That's it. That's what we do.

I would suggest that one of these families will still be close twenty-five years from now.

Door Number One or Door Number Two?

Church Growth for the Millennium: A Resource Kit

2008-01-08T14:16:00.001-08:00

Here’s a collection of the latest in resources from the church growth industry:

“Pastor, are you sick of those sneaky sheep slipping out the side door of the sanctuary while you’re supposed to be sequestered with the Spirit? Here at Locking The Sheep Gate Ministries, we’ll show you how to turn simple visitor cards into a database to track your flock! Even your church secretary can round up those strays with our automated, software-driven “We Miss You When You’re Out” bulk postcard mailing system. Visitation tickler-file option available, along with more-emphatic Holy Fire© message cards for repeat backsliders. For Mac or Windows XP.”

“Attention, church leaders: Your church attendance could triple in just one year! Humble Church of Blister, Nevada did it with church growth tools from Bigger Barns Ministries! Says Pastor Delroy Blunt: “That’s right! Our quarterly ‘Bring A Friend If You’re a Real Christian Sunday’ program is packing them in! We’ve had to borrow over a million dollars at junk bond rates to build a new sanctuary!”

“Church growth research shows that once your sanctuary fills to 85% seating capacity, people start turning away. Help your parishioners avoid sitting so close together by adding pews from the Room For Every Heart Sacred Furniture Company of Swanee, Indiana. Call us at 1-800-MOVEOVER. Ask our sales rep about Slice O’ Heaven theater seating when you call. Remember, just because we’re one in Christ doesn’t mean people want to touch each other.”

“Music Ministers: Are you losing members to bigger churches with big praise bands and big budgets? Hold your sacred ground with our HymnTastic computerized synthesizer and synchronized PowerPoint Lyrics Display. From “The Old Rugged Cross” to the hottest Christian country and rap, our Internet download service makes the preparation of heavenly worship as easy as reading your e-mail! And add enjoyment to reading those song lyrics with our beautiful Creation Sings© series of background slides. Your song lyrics are superimposed over fifty beautiful sunsets and landscapes, each guaranteed to inspire even the most lackadaisical worshipper.”

“Most people come to church because of the invitation of a friend or relative. Think of the potential, Pastor, if your members would just invite all their unsaved friends. You say it doesn’t happen at your church? Then you need the FriendSaver© System from Big S Jesus Marketing. You preach one special evangelism sermon (text enclosed), and pass out a FriendSaver© Evangelism Card to each member. Encourage them to list the names of all their friends who do not come to your church. Don’t worry about people feeling pressured, everything is voluntary. If someone does not wish to provide a list of names, simply have them check the box on the card marked, “I want my friends to go to hell”. You’ll be amazed at the level of participation! Then, once the names of these infidels are entered into your church computer, our software creates exciting personalized letters about you and your church. Our AutoMail feature sends these letters out every week over the machine signature of your own church members! The impact is incredible!”

The preceding tongue-in-cheek paragraphs would be more humorous if they were not so true to life. Each one is based on current practices or products currently in use out there in the church marketplace. As the comedians sometimes say, “This stuff writes itself.”

Here's where the frogs come from...

2007-12-31T08:38:00.000-08:00

Oh, to see noble and Biblical-sounding things in the Spirit, so that others might be impressed with my wisdom and spirituality. Instead, today I saw frogs. Lots of frogs.

The vision revolved around the old high-school biology legend about a frog placed in a pan of water. The idea is that if one increases the temperature of the water slowly enough, the frog will not jump out of the pan and will eventually be boiled where he sits. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the legend, but the idea is central to the vision.

I was a frog (Paul gets to go to the third heaven, I get this) among many other frogs in a large pool of water. Somehow, I realized that the water had become very hot, and I jumped out onto the side of the pool. Here I noticed several things:

1) None of the other frogs seemed to be as uncomfortable in the pool as I had been. Certainly no one else had jumped out.

2) After the heat of the pool, I was shivering. My first strong inclination was to hop back into the pool where it was warm. But even as I sat on the poolside, my body temperature began to adjust, and it became harder and harder to contemplate going back in. Soon I was seeing the pool as a developing frog stew, not as a place to live.

3) My next inclination was to somehow get the other frogs out of the perilous pool. But my attempts to grab every frog in sight and snatch them out of the pool met with failure. As fast as I could yank them out, they would begin to shiver and would dive back in to the warmth of the pool.

4) Shouting at the frogs to warn them did no good. “What do you know?” they would reply. “There you are, where no self-respecting frog would be. If you were in here with us, we might listen to you.” But by this time, nothing could have driven me back into that burgeoning frog-leg soup.

5) But I could not simply leave my brother amphibians to their fate. So I was relegated to sitting on the side of the pool, waiting for the occasional frog to get hot under the collar (do frogs have collars?), and then helping those particular frogs out of the water.

In this vision, the pool is the current religious system, and the frogs are the believers who live in that system. The rest is easily interpreted from there. The spiritual corruption of the kingdoms of men is insidious and works its way into our consciousness until we believe we are truly in the will of God. By the grace of God, the Spirit speaks to us to be conformed to Christ and not to the systems. That path is the way to life, but is hard on the natural man. And even when we have begun to see the kingdom of God, we can only teach, encourage and intercede for others. But we have no authority to force them out of man’s ways and into God’s purposes. Even as the Holy Spirit has spoken to us, so can He be trusted to speak to our brothers. He will use us to speak to our brothers as a part of His working, not our own best intentions.

In sharing this vision with the brothers (and don’t think that doesn’t take some nerve), there were other observations.

· Many people who are saved never experience the “warming pool”. They are born and happily live in the natural environment they are destined to inhabit. They will not miss anything if they never set foot in the pool. There is no need to send them there.

· Not everyone is called to be a “frog lifeguard”. But there are those who God is stationing on the edge of the pool for an eventual exodus by many who finally “feel the heat”.

· Our fellow frogs may resist our helping them out of the pool if we have previously been known to “gig the frogs”. If we have poked people unlovingly for their current positions, they may be understandably wary of us.

· There is a strong temptation to judge everyone who insists on remaining in the pool. But even as some are called to rescue, and many are called to intercede, none of us is called to judge.